The Neapolitan director brings to Lido a more intimate film than the latest works, less dripping with excesses. “So don’t embrace,” he jokes in half. With Toni Servillo President of the Republic at the end of the mandate with difficult choices
A little on the traces of The starjust on the coil of Rome de The great beauty, Grace opens the Venice Film Festival 2025 With a “minor tone” Sorrentino. Fortunately. More intimate and less exaggerated. It contains its gallery of excesses, as well as the phrases of the sentences, and becomes more sober (adjective never completely suitable for its recent cinema), to the advantage of the effective narration rather than effect. He gets the applause of the first projection for the printing in the Darsena room. Maybe the most successful movie later The great beauty.
“How come this choice of sobriety? So do not embrace », explains the Neapolitan director and screenwriter Oscar winner in front of journalists, with a half smile in the face. «Joke, even if only up to a certain point. The staging is an instinctive choice and each story has its own way to be told ».
Film in the running for the Golden Lion in Venice, edition 82, find in Toni Servillo The usual giant actor who always moves at ease under the plots of Paolo Sorrentino. Beautiful confirmation of Anna Ferzettiat his side, that we had recently appreciated The Nibbio.
If Giulio Andreotti had already been servillo (ne The star) and Silvio Berlusconi (in They) for Sorrentino, now becomes President of the Italian Republic in Grace. It is Mariano De Santis, a criminal jurist and president in his white semester, six months after the end of his mandate. Vedovo, Catholic, somewhat rigid and immobile in his political commitment, so much so that he is nicknamed “reinforced concrete”, he has a daughter, Dorotea (Ferzetti), a jurist like him, his efficient right arm. In the last boring days at the Quirinale, now by recalling the ghost of the dead wife, now smoking a cigarette secretly, he grants the latest stocked: decide whether to grant two thanks and affix his signature to the law on euthanasiato whom he holds his daughter so much.
“I go back to playing for Paolo with such a complex character,” observes Servillo. “He has already given me other beautiful ones. It is always a relaunchnot satisfying. We did well, without giving us a program, life decided for us ».
In the reflective man’s ways, his De Santis can vaguely remember Sergio Mattarella… “For the character we did not refer to a single President of the Republic”, the actor points out. «There have been countless Christian Democrats, widowers, law men, Neapolitans, with a daughter. We had a spectrum of presidents to refer to ».
To Coco Valori, the best friend of President De Santis, played by Milvia Mariglianothe most irresistible and … effect jokes are entrusted. “You politicians entertain with the truth an hysterical relationship”, says Coco, “parody of an art criticism”.
The film was born from a food for a news, from a real bed years ago from Sorrentino, when Mattarella granted grace to a man who had killed Alzheimer’s sick wife. “I immediately seemed to be an interesting moral dilemma to tell,” said the director at Lido.
The other moral dilemma that the film faces is euthanasia. “Who are our days?”, It is one of the repeated sentences Grace. “I can only hope that my film can attract attention to a fundamental theme like that of euthanasia, even if cinema no longer has an impact of devastating popularity as it once had”, reflects the director.
There is no lack of touches of lightness, obviously with grotesque and surreal glazes to Sorrentino Style. Here then the black Pope with Dreads to the hair, which immediately arouses smiles in the room, goes away in motion. And then the cameo of Gué Pequeno And the two singing performances of Servillo/De Santis, in a rap and in a choir of Alpine troops. “I found myself more comfortable to sing the alpine choir,” jokes the actor. «This with all respect and sympathy for Gué. Rap was a long source of concern, above all try to send the text by heart ».
Grace It is a love film between father and daughter, a film about doubt and responsibility. Does not find the most essential and reflective touch of the filmography of Sorrentino before de The great beautythe watershed after which his aesthetic has become exasperated and artificial protagonist, but he lets himself be appreciated gracefully. The applause in the room were deserved.
