‘La Grazia’, Paolo Sorrentino seeks freedom in a film about euthanasia, family and forgiveness

This case is one of the triggers for the moral dilemma of Mariano De Santis, a lawman obsessed with the truth of professional distortion and tormented by his wife’s infidelity for more than four years. However, the absence of her late wife Aurora weighs on her. “When I stop, I duermo”, sounds constantly.

Your family will dream and ease the absence of pregnancy. De Santis, whom everyone calls ‘Reinforced Concrete’, aspires to be light, like an astronaut who spends months floating in a space capsule, watching with fascination as he gets right into the emotion. As en Creation of Adam de Miguel Ángel, De Santis tries to touch that tear that floats in space without trying to clean it.

In his new film Sorrento Baroque if you laugh at sobriety what characterizes its protagonist. Fragile and friendly Toni Servillo in a contained performance that won her the Copa Volpi for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. The Italian filmmaker is delighted with the frenetic pace of his previous political films, looking for the imaginary gangster of his admirer Martin Scorsese, and recreates himself in hope, in this time of reflection, which the president adheres to so as not to rush into dictation. It is also an explicit ode to Rome, as written above gatsby of the Italian capital en Great beauty (2014) why I won an Oscar. Don’t go back to the lights of beauty and dialogue as intelligent as it was that was emphasized in the last movie, Parthenope (2024).

But without autobiographical shades God’s hand (2021), Sorrentino creates an honest and unnatural film that focuses on grace in small gestures of greatness. In the protagonist’s unrelenting relationship with childhood friend Coco Valori (the very funny Milvia Marigliano); in the loyalty and understanding of his presidential “coracer” (Orlando Cinque); in this new bewitchable person who hopes every day to be out of prison and untouched by his appearance; in a horse that is in agony and that the president is unable to stop. But above all in the overall relationship between De Santis and his daughter Dorothea (the excellent Anna Ferzetti), also a careful lawyer who sacrificed her life to take care of her, although both still seemed like two strangers.

Grace it shows that the creator of excesses can turn into an ascetic in a way

“What does my father think about when he smokes?” Dorothea asks her guardian. “En your mother,” he replies. Aurora, the touch of life and color of this gray man, is a specter that returns to what we see of the warriors, passing through the plundered rural village where De Santis first sees her, and where this return returns physically and emotionally. The creator is aware of the president’s dilemmas, which need to be reflected on morality and life, forgiveness and family. In the door of rejoicing and away from norms and rituals, De Santis is rewarded with adolescent rebelliousness.

And so Sorrentino knows a lot about it, who can’t do without a meter ramalaz of electronic music (his sound bands are always well known) and will do any other trick: ask the president to kidnap in the Quirinal and for the Sumo Pontifice, a black man with rastas, to ride on a motorcycle like a popemobile.

Gracewhich was released in Spain on April 1, does not allow us to demonstrate Sorrentino’s authorial imprint – his unique view of Italian idiosyncrasy is part of the history of 21st century cinema – but also that a top filmmaker can transform the ascetic in his own way. The light that De Santis brought thanks he misses the beauty of a man. “It’s too late for passion, but I think I’ve met someone,” he assures at the end of the film. The truth that a lawyer understands is overrated: life in uncertainty is much more valuable.