For many years, the Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino couldn’t miss, making films that were widely embraced by critics and audiences, and, in two cases, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: 2013’s The Great Beauty won the best international feature Oscar and 2021’s The Hand of God was nominated for it.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that both of the aforementioned films, and five others directed by Sorrentino, have starred the great Italian stage-turned-screen actor Toni Servillo — or that Sorrentino’s least well-received film in years, 2024’s Parthenope, was the first one in years that he had without Servillo.
Sorrentino and Servillo have reunited on La Grazia, which opened the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday and then the Telluride Film Festival on Friday, and the good news is that the film — in the opinion of many, including THR’s film critic and myself — marks a return to form for Sorrentino, and features one of Servillo’s most impressive turns yet.
Servillo plays a brilliant judge-turned-admired president of Italy who is in a reflective mood with just six months remaining in his term. His beloved wife died eight years ago, but she — and the extramarital affair that she had 40 years ago — still occupies his thoughts every day. His two children — including a daughter who works closely with him — harbor resentment towards him. And he can’t seem to make up his mind about anything, including and especially whether to sign a bill allowing euthanasia and how to rule on two pardons that have been proposed for people who killed their spouses under murky circumstances.
Sorrentino previously explored Italian politics — prime ministers, specifically — in 2008’s Il Divo and 2018’s Loro. But his film that La Grazia most reminds me of is The Great Beauty, which also centers on an aging Roman played by Servillo. The Servillo characters have totally different professions and temperaments, but both are depicted at a moment when they are rethinking and questioning their past, and watching Servillo do that, amidst beautiful settings and a powerful score, is utterly engrossing.
La Grazia will be released by Mubi later this year. It strikes me as more likely than not that the film will be Italy’s submission for the best international feature Oscar competition, and that Servillo could garner some real traction in the best actor Oscar race. Servillo has never been nominated, and it seems to me that that ought to be corrected sooner or later.