Cinema: Sorrentino's Parthenope gets mixed reviews

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 22 - Paolo Sorrentino's latest hymn to his native Naples, Parthenope, got mixed reviews Wednesday after debuting at the Cannes Film Festival Tuesday where the tale of a woman personifying the southern Italian city is up for the Palme d'Or.
    Parthenope stars newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta as the title character as a young woman while Italian screen legend Stefania Sandrelli has a cameo as her in old age.
    Gary Oldman plays alcoholic American writer John Cheever.
    Sorrentino, who won the best foreign film Oscar in 2013 with The Great Beauty, about Rome, and who won further acclaim with The Hand of God, about Naples, in 2021, has said the film is about a woman named Parthenope "who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth." The Times, in a negative review, said: "This is a film that strives desperately for beauty, sensuality and philosophical depth and only sporadically achieves the first of those." But Deadline Hollywood Daily, in a positive review, said: "Porta is a real find in the title role... The rest of the cast, including Oldman's brief but moving turn and Sandrelli's lovely work at the end, deliver lots of flavor." Parthenope is the only Italian in competition at Cannes this year.
    As it debuted Tuesday, the director said: "Its an aesthetic anthology on Naples, sacred and profane, beautiful and ugly. I investigate the mystery of the woman and of my city. Not a love letter, but a homage to unlived youth".
    However, Italy is also represented at Cannes by Marcello Mio, French director Cristophe Honoré's tribute to the great Marcello Mastroianni, with his daughter Chiara and Catherine Deneuve.
    (ANSA).