At the Greek and Italian Film Festivals - 🎥 Janice Tong embraces a Trilogy: Life's Labyrinths, Part 2 - LA GRAZIA (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, 2025)

1. Nyhterinos ekfonitis | Athens Midnight Radio (2024) Greece, Directed by Renos Haralambidis (Click to read)
2. La grazia (2025) Italy, Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
3. Il tempo che ci vuole | The Time it Takes (2024) Italy | France, Directed by Francesca Comencini (to be published shortly) 

 

Toni Servillo, La Grazia

Paolo Sorrentino’s La grazia was the second film I saw at this year’s Italian Film Festival. It was also the only film that was advertised on the site without a trailer (some weird AI-generated trailer was available upon searching on YouTube – but you could smell its fishy falsity within a couple of seconds) and the singular marketing I managed to find at the time, was an image of the back of the great Toni Servillo (Sorrentino’s chameleonic long-term collaborator), dressed formally in a black coat and hat, standing looking sideways on what looks to be a country road that leads somewhere into the distance. His gaze unseen by us, his face, in a half profile, yielded little expression, at least none that can be easily deciphered. Even the 20 word blurb gave nothing away. I entered the theatre with only a hastily glanced meaning of the words la grazia in mind.

La grazia is a word that describes not only the translation any English-speaking person would discern upon seeing the word – grace. Its variation in usage and meaning yields a complex but well-rounded description of Sorrentino’s elegant film (note he was also the writer of this film). The word signals multiple meanings concurrently: 1. Favour or benevolence in the form of goodwill; 2. Gratitude – in its signifying of thankfulness or a blessing; 3. Also, it conveys the idea of pardon or mercy in a legal sense, of clemency or formal pardon granted by the head of state; and lastly, 4. The spiritual beneficence of divine favour – where a state of grace is attained.

Just like a modern-day sorcerer, Sorrentino weaves these elements together into the life-tapestry of Servillo’s Italian President, Mariano de Santis, who is serving out the last 6 months of his 7 year term. His daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferezzeti) runs a tight schedule for him, right down to what he is allowed to eat, (something like boiled fish and potatoes), so as to keep his weight off; a somewhat sardonic recurring theme: the president’s envy of the weightlessness of an astronaut who also has 6 months before returning to earth, and the president’s own earnt nickname of ‘reinforced concrete’ – conjuring a visual image of a slab of that heavy but dull, grey material; but really, this description is in context to his dogmatism in carrying out duties to the letter of the law. 

 

Anna Ferezzeti, La Grazia

And so, his days passed, not unkindly, like that of a groundhog, where one day blends into the next; where history weighs him down and the future is but an abyss, a void eternal in which he must surrender. Sometimes when he is up on the roof top of his residence, we couldn’t help but wonder whether he would leap off its parapet. 

 

In an echo of the eternal city where he lives, eternity is measured by the stretch of his inability to act on (seemingly) just three things: 1. To put his signature to an euthanasia bill that his daughter has prepared; 2. The decision of whether to grant pardon to a woman who has murdered her abusive husband; and 3. Whether or not to grant pardon to a man who had ended his wife’s suffering from Alzheimer's. If we go back to the marketing still for this film, we now know that, despite the straight road that leads ahead, he had turned his head to the side, and in doing so, he is offering up to himself, a different choice, a diverting path to take (somewhere off-frame). And this is how he has to navigate what remains of his term and what remains of his life – the loss of his wife, his knowledge that she has cheated on him at a much earlier juncture of their marriage, and the three things of his governance weighed on him (no amount of dieting would alleviate his heavy burden). 

But there are light-hearted moments too: in the form of his larger than life friend, Coco Valori, played here with unforgettable flair and vibrancy by Milvia Marigliano delivers to the camera a rich Fellinesque jewel that Sorrentino reveres. Other moments of hilarity come in the form of Chaplinesque caper: the red-carpeted arrival of the Portuguese prime minister, majestically broken by a sudden rain storm – all in exquisite multi-angled slow motion for our visual enjoyment – a mockery of the absurdity of formalities. Working with his long-term collaborator, Daria D'Antonio at the helm of the camera, provides just the right amount of comedy to offset the gravity of Mariano’s decisions. We mustn’t forget to mention Mariano’s new penchant for listening to rap music in the evenings on his headphones, seated in the official Cabinet’s leather and dark wood office – just when you think any seriousness was checked at the door – Sorrentino raps, to camera, perfectly. In fact, the pulsing techno music that recurs throughout the film acts as that needlepoint of balance on a scale – tipping sometimes to enjoyment, sometimes to endurance; a metaphor for one’s moral compass: the unyielding oscillation between doubt and certainty, right or wrong.

 

Toni Servillo, Paolo Sorrentino at the Venice Festival
Premiere of La Grazia

In Sorrentino’s 2024 Parthenope, a film I regard as the writer/director’s best work (sadly my sentiment was not shared by other critics), he posed this question: “what happens if you just let go?” – a profound and deeply troubling question, as most people desperately cling onto whatever they deem to be important, when really, nothing is as vital as it may seem – good looks, what other people think of you, the millstone around your neck (unless you’re one of the handful of fortunates who loves your job), politics and government, social media, or things you simply can’t change. Who dares to live authentically themselves these days (despite loud pronouncements of this achievement)? And here in La grazia, the question asked is a simpler one, but no less weighty: “who owns our days?”, a follow-up question of the former. If there is a right answer to this question, does it make it true to your current situation? For me, the dual questions posed by Sorrentino continue to linger long after the film ends. 

La grazia won 7 awards at the 82nd Venice Film Festival with Servillo taking the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. 

An interesting interview with the director at the 63rd New York Film Festival is available here.

The Italian Film Festival ran in September and October in Australia this year.

The Greek Film Festival ran in October in Australia this year.