The end of love

Partenophe: Sorrentino and the Decline of Europe Seen from Naples

I went to see Partenophe, Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, and I was struck by how vividly it captures the failure of a European world that once seemed poised to turn our history into a hedonistic theme park, supervised by artists and academics. Partenophe should be seen as the continuation—or perhaps even the disenchanted conclusion—of two of the Neapolitan director’s previous films: La Grande Bellezza and È stata la Mano di Dio, both of which were well received by critics and, at first glance, appear independent from each other.

It’s no surprise that Partenophe has caused discomfort and, to some extent, disappointment, because its underlying message is brutally harsh, difficult to stomach. Critics focus on the beauty of the protagonist, but the true protagonist of the film is not the beautiful actress whom Sorrentino obsessively follows up and down with his morbid, perfectionist camera, so skilled at making stones speak. The real protagonist is the sterility of a world that infects everything it touches, a world that no longer knows how to move forward—trapped, after years of scorning love, between superstition and calculation.

“Italy, and by extension, all of Europe, has never been closer to this Naples I once thought I had escaped from,” Sorrentino seems to think as he lingers over every scene. The entire film is a reminder of how impossible it is to break free from the past and of the radioactive force of history’s black holes. Greta Cool, the actress who supposedly made it big in northern Italy, is a wretched woman who hides her baldness with a wig. The speech she gives about Neapolitans could just as easily be made about the Catalans, the French, and soon enough, the English and Americans too.

The film serves as a warning to the entire Western world, which is growing more homogeneous in its miseries. It is no coincidence that Partenophe is not only the name of the protagonist but also the name the Greeks gave to Naples long before Rome founded the myths that sustain the Italian state. There’s a reason why the protagonist is a modern-day princess who sleeps in an 18th-century carriage converted into a bedroom; a sleeping beauty who cannot find a man to wake her with a kiss and pull her out of her shell. Aside from John Cheever, the most improbable of flirts, the only people who truly touch Partenophe’s heart are a middle-aged cardinal who tenderly insists on making love to her once she has parted her legs, and a cross-eyed anthropology professor who takes her on as his disciple.

The academic hides in a back room of his house a monstrous son—a tragicomic caricature of this generation of frivolous, spoiled children, entertained by the inane drivel of TikTok. The film’s tedious pace is so in tune with the feeling of stagnation that it feels like Sorrentino’s own confession about the limitations of his genius and his career. The tricks that worked in La Grande Bellezza now have a stale glow, leaving a sense of impotence, of a dead end. Real love is expressed through action, but in an exhausted society where everyone is trapped in comedy, even action is tainted from the start.

Partenophe’s brother, weak because he sees everything too clearly, kills himself when he realizes that he cannot even live in love with his own sister. There is one scene that perfectly encapsulates how love is condemned in a world so ritualized that it has lost the strength to be genuine, to distinguish spontaneity from performance. In a poor Naples neighborhood, a teenage couple consummates their marriage under the watchful eyes of tribal elders. The camera lingers on the murky gazes of the old men, who grow aroused as they oversee the creation of a future already born dead—without mystery, without love. Suddenly, the film’s exuberant opening scene, which depicts the conception and birth of Partenophe, no longer seems so luminous.

Myths and works of art are the source of a people’s existence and power, but they have become consumer objects—like Sorrentino’s own film, which laments this even as it profits from it. The filmmaker does not believe in Italy, but he does not believe in Naples either. Much like what happens to Albert Serra or Rosalía with Catalonia, the filmmaker has managed to create a personal mythology from the wreckage of a collective shipwreck. The problem is that, whether from a lack of genius or courage, he cannot connect his creations to the history of his people, and so he sells his mythology with a growing sense of guilt and stagnation, like a souvenir on La Rambla.

In the end, the girl grows old, her beauty fades, while the statues remain eternally splendid—ever more orphaned of meaning in a dying world.