La Grazia

Think of the great filmmaker and actor partnerships: Kurosawa and Mifune; Truffaut and Leaud; Scorsese and De Niro… In Italy, we think of Fellini and Mastroiannni, and now, surely, Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. Of Sorrentino’s 10 features, Servillo has starred in seven, most famously the Academy Award–winning The Great Beauty.

In their latest collaboration, La Grazia (Grace), Servillo plays a fictional President of the Republic, Mariano De Santis — a Catholic widower and legal scholar approaching the end of his term and deliberating whether to issue two presidential pardons that touch on his private life in complicated ways. This is a serious drama about power and moral dilemmas, the kind of thorny ethical questions of conscience that seem to have gone out of the window in today’s politics. Directed with striking fluidity and imagination, and acted with mournful mastery, this one finds Sorrentino and Servillo at their very best.

Sorrentino immerses you in lush, classic yet modern worlds filled with interesting faces (comic, soulful), long-legged sylphs (some wiser than others), luxurious estates (some more vulgar than others), ravishing landscapes and much art. His is an exacting, refined visual sensibility that’s been marinated in millenniums of history… It’s enjoyable to be back in Sorrentino’s richly detailed and stylized universe, with all its enchantments and individualized, warm-blooded characters… La Grazia again reminds you that of all the beauties gracing Sorrentino’s movies, few are as indelible as this filmmaker and performer, joined together in mutually supportive sync.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Paolo Sorrentino has rediscovered his voice, his wan humour and his flair for the surreal and sensational set piece; this wintry, elegant movie is a welcome reassertion of his natural style… La Grazia is a stylish, soigné film, ruminative and enigmatic. It’s a satisfying meditation on the pleasures and sadnesses of solitude in old age.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian