When the successful series by director Paolo Sorrentino The young pope debuted in 2016, it took the Vatican a year to reluctantly bless its fictional and sometimes blasphemous portrait of the pope. Not so for Sorrentino's latest film Partenopewhich received the first rejection from the Italian Catholic Church.
That appears to have sparked interest in the film, putting it at the top of the box office here for Italian films since its theatrical release last month.
Set in Sorrentino's native Naples, the film is a lush meditation on beauty, love and death, drawn from the Greek myth of the mermaid Parthenope, who throws herself into the sea after failing to attract Ulysses with her song. Partenope is closely affiliated with Naples, so much so that the city is sometimes called “Partenope” and its people “Partenopei” in Italian.
The film isn't about the church at all, but there's a single scene near the end that would make any Catholic choke. It involves a cardinal, the seductive protagonist Partenope, and the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro – the supposedly recurring miracle that is a sacred cow to many Neapolitans.
Prominent Italian Catholics have denounced the sacrilegious sexual scene not only as humiliating to the faith but to Naples itself, with the Italian bishops' conference newspaper Avvenire calling the scene's “sterile aesthetics” “in bad taste.”
Celeste Dalla Porta (left) and Stefania Sandrelli in 'Parthenope.'
Gianni Fiorito/Cannes Film Festival
In a series of negative reactions, Avvenire highlighted Sorrentino's fascination with the Catholic Church The young pope had reached new lows Partenope.
«The impression is that they are images chosen for the image's sake, whether they are nuns playing tennis or cardinals smoking cigars», concluded Avvenire.
Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, who oversees the chapel that houses the relic of the blood of San Gennaro and related treasures of Naples' patron saint, said he had not seen the film in full but that clips of the scene were sufficient.
While acknowledging that his comments would only give the film more publicity, De Gregorio said Corriere della Sera which mainly objected to the film's “superficial” treatment of one of Naples' most enduring mysteries: how the blood of San Gennaro liquefies, or not, on three specific days each year.
According to legend, the alleged miracle recalls the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631 when the blood of San Gennaro liquefied and the volcano's magma stopped before entering the city. San Gennaro is today often invoked to protect Neapolitans and the ritual three times a year attracts thousands of devotees.
«Naturally Sorrentino did not intend to make a documentary or an in-depth sociological and historical analysis of Naples, but simply to analyze its dreamlike aspect, because ultimately that's all there is to it», said De Gregorio. Courier.
Sorrentino, Oscar winner for his Fellini-esque love letter to Rome, The Great Beautyhe said that his ode to Naples was to focus on Partenope, the sea and the complicated and sometimes contradictory relationship between them and Naples itself.
“She is a free woman, very spontaneous, she doesn't judge, just as she doesn't judge the city,” he declared in a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, where Partenope debuted in May to a standing ovation. “She is the reflection of the city I grew up in.”
And some said goodbye Partenopewith the Cannes jury awarding its director of photography, Daria d'Antonio, the festival's technical prize. This week, Italian media reported that T-shirts reading “I love Sorrentino” and “I love Sorrentino” have begun circulating around Naples. Partenope”, and new figurines for the Christmas nativity scene, for which Neapolitan artisans are famous, which depict one of the characters from the film.
Sorrentino himself found adoring fans seeking selfies and autographs this week during a special screening of the film in Palermo, Sicily.
It's the latest shot in recent cinematic attention for Naples, the backdrop to the HBO television series My brilliant friend based on the quartet of best-selling novels by Elena Ferrante.
Sorrentino's latest feature film, The hand of God, it was also based in Naples and featured another sacred but secular icon for Neapolitans, Maradona. Before that, he made a splash with his 10-episode series The young popewith Jude Law as an unlikely and controversial pope, which followed The new popewith John Malkovich.
A year after the initial HBO and Sky series began airing in Italy in late 2016, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano ultimately offered generally positive reviews despite what he called the “frivolous,” “caustic,” and “grotesque” way he depicted the Vatican.
L'Osservatore Romano did not comment Partenope.
The Vatican is a perennial topic for filmmakers, with a number of films in recent years focusing on the papacy, including Nanni Moretti's Habemus PapamNetflix The Two Popes and more recently Conclave played by Ralph Fiennes.