Parthenope: Naples' Most Beguiling Woman Exists But for Males to Gaze Upon

By Chris Knight

Rating: C

I was a little worried by the studio’s writeup for Parthenope, “a beguiling story of a woman whose breathtaking beauty makes men melt.”

“Just about everyone is smitten with Parthenope,” we’re told. “Playboys, strangers, her childhood friend (Dario Aita), and even her 
brother (Daniele Rienzo) and a bishop (Peppe Lanzetta), neither of whom should be.” Oh, and this: “Her beauty will trigger a tragic incident.”

Celeste Dalla Porta, Daniele Rienzo and Dario Aita in Parthenope

Now, I’ve got nothing against lovely women — heck, I married one — but that does seem a rather thin rack on which to hang a plot. And two-plus hours spent wafting through Parthenope’s breezy life only confirmed these suspicions. 

As played by Celeste Dalla Porta, she is indeed breathtaking, beauteous and beguiling. But as written by Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino (who also directs), there is precious little going on beneath that alabaster exterior. One can only have characters ask each other “What are you thinking?” so many times before it feels as though the question is being begged.

The film opens in Naples, 1950 — Sorrentino’s hometown, don’t you know — with Parthenope’s birth in the Tyrrhenian Sea, a fitting locale for a girl named after one of the sirens of Greek mythology.

It then makes a quick cut to 1968, presumably to avoid the awkward situation of audiences ogling this gorgeous creature at anything less than a legal age. Parthenope spends her late teenage years lolling on the beach with her childhood friend and her brother, both of them clearly smitten with her to various degrees of inappropriateness.

The camera, meanwhile, loves her breasts, and Sorrentino clearly wants us to as well. Your choice, of course.

The filmmaker tries to head off any argument that Parthenope is nothing more than a pretty face and a sexy body, by having her excel at her anthropology degree. Her crotchety professor ultimately awards her a grade of 110 out of 110, plus an “academic kiss,” which Google tells me is an Italian educational tradition and not a come-on.

In any case, professor Marotta (Silvio Orlando) seems to be the only man immune to Parthenope’s physical charms, unless you count her run-in with celebrated writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman), who informs her that his only defence against her charms is that he’s a homosexual.

The film, which starts out on relatively realistic footing, by the end devolves into some bizarre turns, as when Parthenope attends a public honeymoon — I guess the family wanted to confirm the consummation — or takes up with a grouchy bishop, a liaison that introduced me to a new item of religious adornment, the butt-crack crucifix.

I must admit that as a male film critic I felt a tad skeezy while watching Parthenope, thanks to its scopophilic fetishization of the female body. (And my thanks to actress Sarah Gadon, who taught me this phrase many years ago).

There wasn’t the crackling dialogue or whimsical musical choices of 2015’s Youth; one of Sorrentino’s best. There WAS the aimlessness and self-indulgence of 2021’s The Hand of God, another of his which left me cold.

But there was also the presence of Sorrentino’s first female lead, and I hope it’s not his last. In fact, he’s said to be working on a film based on Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Teresa Carpenter’s 1992 true-crime story Mob Girl: A Woman’s Life in the Underworld, with Jennifer Lawrence as the lead.

Just remember, maestro, her eyes are up here.

Parthenope. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Starring Celeste Dalla Porta and Silvia Orlando. Opens February 21 in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, with other cities to follow.