THERE is something about the sea which symbolises the turbid ebb and flow of human emotions as we journey through life towards our inevitable end. Paolo Sorrentino’s sumptuous film Parthenope (Cert. 15) continues his exploration of material and spiritual values. In the Bay of Naples, a suitable metaphor, a baby is born in its shallows. She is immediately called Parthenope (meaning virgin-voiced) after the siren in Greek mythology who drowned herself there.
Later, the 18-year-old Parthenope di Sangro (Celeste Dalla Porta), with the sea as her background, astounds others with her beauty. “A goddess!” one exclaims. She also gets likened to the Blessed Virgin Mary, sometimes known as Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Undoubtedly Parthenope is blessed among women. The world lies at her feet, but here is where comparisons end; for she travels through it as a somewhat detached observer, an inscrutable expression on her face. People forever ask her what she is thinking, to which there is no response.
Parthenope is described by one lover as having joyless eyes, a case of youth being wasted on the young. Sorrentino dispels notions that this particular stage of life and any of its physical graces represent an evanescent sense of freedom. Parthenope captures the symbiosis of the sacred and the profane when she says: “Desire is a mystery, and sex is its funeral.” Life is a great deal more complicated and richer.
The film takes us through a series of visually dazzling episodes, mostly culminating in disappointment. A thread has us believe that Parthenope’s consuming passion is anthropology, despite scant evidence of her studying the subject. Her professor, Devoto Marotta (Silvio Orlando), brusquely asserts that young people want answers without knowing how to ask questions. It is only when he assigns her a thesis on the cultural impact of miracles on developed societies that she begins to open her eyes to what is truly real.
She visits the notorious Cardinal Teserone (Peppe Lanzette), in whose cathedral is stored blood of the patron saint of Naples, Gennaro. Occasionally, the blood, it is claimed, liquefies again. Not this time. The cynical Tesorone considers the city’s spirituality as being as changeable as the sea. Love is what matters and how we cope with its unmanageability. Freedom is elusive, but here in church we can let ourselves go. A controversial sex scene follows, during which the saint’s blood liquefies. Reflecting on this sacrilegious act, Parthenope realises that anthropology is about seeing who and what we truly are.
Viewers may quibble that Sorrentino pursues a path similar to D. H. Lawrence’s, where our over-developed consciousness of ego yields to being at one with more sensuous ways. The sea of faith with its turning tides gives opportunities for new birth. Sorrentino may not claim to be religious, but his work (which includes The Young Pope and The New Pope) constantly seeks to find connections between faith and life. Parthenope is ultimately a celebration of that oceanic feeling where we experience a sense of eternity like an ever-rolling surf.