Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, La Grazia, opens the prestigious Venice Film Festival, showcasing a gripping narrative and stellar performances.
Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘La Grazia’ Premieres at Venice Film Festival
Paolo Sorrentino‘s latest feature, La Grazia, is set to open the Venice Film Festival this evening.
Plot Overview
Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti star in this drama about an Italian president facing profound moral dilemmas during the final six months of his term, including two potential pardons and the contentious issue of legalizing euthanasia.
Collaboration with Toni Servillo
La Grazia, written and directed by Sorrentino, reunites him with his longtime muse Servillo, who also starred in the filmmaker’s Oscar-winning film, The Great Beauty.
Critical Reception
So far, the film has received largely positive reviews. Here are some early reactions:
Deadline’s Pete Hammond noted, “Clearly the current political winds in both Italy and America have got this masterful filmmaker again thinking about the government and what it means to be a moral leader.”
Praising Servillo, Hammond remarked that the actor, who has never been nominated for an Oscar, “should be for this.” He concluded, “Sorrentino has made some beauties in his career. This is one of his best.”
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw expressed that Sorrentino “has rediscovered his voice, his wan humour, and his flair for the surreal and sensational set piece; this wintry, elegant movie is a welcome reassertion of his natural style after the facile and weirdly humourless affectations of his previous film, Parthenope.”
Bradshaw also mentioned, “Maybe this film, concluding as it does on a distinctive note of euphoric sentimentality, does not add up to quite as much as the director thinks; but it intrigues, it exhilarates and it shows that Sorrentino is Italian cinema’s heir to Antonioni.”
For The Playlist, which awarded La Grazia a B, the film is “a compelling watch” that “embodies much of the Sorrentino appeal, even if it registers in a more minor key for the Italian auteur. The film is playful when it wants to be and pensive when it needs to be.”
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The Film Stage highlighted “Sorrentino’s trademark visual flair,” suggesting that “fans of The Great Beauty will likely enjoy this artfully rendered, contemplative, if not truly incisive drama.”
They added, “Narrative shortcomings notwithstanding, La Grazia is never a chore to sit through. Lensed by Daria D’Antonio, it boasts lush, lyrical images that hug your eyeballs like a blanket.”
IndieWire took a different stance, describing La Grazia as “uncharacteristically sedate and sexless” and “a deliberate curveball from modern Italian cinema’s most unbridled maximalist” that “feels like forced Catholic penance for the Neapolitan flesh parade of last year’s poorly received Parthenope.”
Italian film magazine Ciak remarked that, “Above all,” Servillo “shines, stratospherically bringing life and soul to a character who seems to have lost his life and soul to regrets about the past, a life never fully lived.”
Production Details
La Grazia is a Fremantle movie produced by The Apartment, Numero 10, and PiperFilm, which will distribute in Italy. Mubi owns worldwide rights, excluding Italy, while The Match Factory is handling international sales.
About Paolo Sorrentino
Born in Naples in 1970, Sorrentino’s credits include The Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, both of which competed for the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2004 and 2006 respectively. His film Il Divo won the Jury Prize in 2008. He returned to Cannes in 2011 with This Must Be the Place and two years later with The Great Beauty, which won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as three European Film Awards. His last feature, Parthenope, debuted at Cannes in 2024.
