Beauty, beauty, beauty. Is your film shy of things to say? Don’t sweat it; just make sure you’ve got top-notch cinematography and an attractive cast. Then nobody will care how shallow your film is. This is the type of film that award shows feature in brief clips just to give you a sense of how beautiful the picture looks, but if you actually see the film, you’ll have a much different reaction.
Parthenope is described as “coming-of-age” which is rich given that the titular subject is an adult for more than two hours of this 137-minute film. The titular character (Celeste Dalla Porta) spends much of her time being ogled and fawned over. This began at birth when she received a carriage bed on day one. In the next scene, she’s a Naples teenager and all the boys in town including her own brother seem to be interested in her milkshake.
Wiki says Parthenope is the original Greek name for Naples, but I like to think she’s named after the Parthenon because she’s a brick (nananana) house. She’s mighty-mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out. ♫
The movie staggers on like this, Parthenope constantly selling sex, but never delivering, for “sex is a funeral.” The only fun part is the chase, apparently, and the chaste makes chase after chase after chase, doncha know? This makes almost all the men in the film look like … well, what’s Italian for “Horndog?”
Competing with Neapolitans for Parthenope’s attention is her studies as an anthropology major at the local U of Naples (“The Fightin’ Ice Cream Cones” — the woman’s teams are the “Double Scoops”). I’m sure that there was a deeper point to be made about how Parthenope is a stellar student of
anthropology and a stellar subject of anthropology at the same time. I have no doubt this was the point, yet for all the film talks about anthropology, we learn very little of the subject itself.
I checked out around the time Parthenope is fingered by a priest who looks and dresses like a professional wrestler. I have no idea what that scene was supposed to be about, nor the one where a random couple has reluctant sex while being studied and prodded by an interactive audience. That kinda made us all uncomfortable.
I cannot tell you what Parthenope takes from this experience. Coming-of-age usually means you start and end in very different places. All Parthenope has really learned is that if you’re pretty, people will fall at your feet … which has been true since time was invented. This film is long and shallow. You’ll get tired of it being pretty after 30 minutes. It’s best left for award show snippets.
There once was a woman of great beauty
Who found it her everlasting duty
To study the men
Who chase her again
While she rejects their “Call of Booty”
Rated R, 137 Minutes
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writer: Paolo Sorrentino
Genre: Pretty
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: You gotta be seriously gaga for Celeste Dalla Porta
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The unimpressed
