When director Paolo Sorrentino’s hit series “The Young Pope” debuted in 2016, it took the Vatican a yr to grudgingly bless his imagined and infrequently blasphemous portrayal of the pope. Not so for Sorrentino’s latest film “Parthenope,” which has gotten an early thumbs down from Italy’s Catholic Church.
That has only looked as if it would pique interest within the film, driving it to the highest of the box office here for Italian movies since its release in theaters 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 siren Parthenope, who throws herself into the ocean after she fails to entice Odysseus along with her song. Parthenope is closely affiliated with Naples, such that town is typically called “Partenope” and its people “Partenopei” in Italian.
The film is certainly not in regards to the church, but toward the tip of the film, there’s a single scene that will make any Catholic choke. It involves a cardinal, the seductive protagonist Parthenope and the liquification of the blood of San Gennaro — the purported recurring miracle that may be a sacred cow to many Neapolitans.
Prominent Italian Catholics have denounced the sacrilegious sex scene as not only demeaning to the religion but Naples itself, with the newspaper of the Italian bishops conference Avvenire calling the “sterile aesthetics” of the scene “in poor taste.”
In a roundup of negative response, Avvenire said Sorrentino’s fascination with the Catholic Church in “The Young Pope” had reached latest lows in “Parthenope.”
“The impression is that they’re images chosen for the image, whether nuns playing tennis or cardinals smoking cigars,” Avvenire concluded.
Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, who oversees the chapel that houses the relic of San Gennaro’s blood and related treasures of Naples’ patron saint, said he hadn’t seen the film in its entirety but that the clips of the scene were enough.
While acknowledging that his comments would only give the film more publicity, De Gregorio told Corriere della Sera that he objected primarily to the “superficial” treatment the film gave to one among Naples’ enduring mysteries: How San Gennaro’s blood liquifies, or doesn’t, on three specific days every year.
According to legend, the purported miracle recalls the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1631 when the blood of San Gennaro liquified and the magma from the volcano stopped before entering town. San Gennaro is today often invoked to guard Neapolitans, and the thrice-yearly ritual draws 1000’s of devotees.
“Of course Sorrentino didn’t intend to make a documentary or an in-depth, sociological, historical evaluation of Naples, but simply to investigate its dreamlike aspect, because mainly that’s all it’s,” De Gregorio told Corriere.
Sorrentino, who won an Oscar for his Fellini-esque love letter to Rome, “The Great Beauty,” has said his ode to Naples needed to concentrate on Parthenope, the ocean and the complicated and at times contradictory relationship between them and Naples itself.
“She is a free woman, very spontaneous, she doesn’t judge, as town doesn’t judge,” he told a press conference on the Cannes Film Festival, where “Parthenope” debuted in May to a standing ovation. “She’s the mirror of town where I grew up.”
And some have hailed “Parthenope,” with the Cannes jury giving its cinematographer, Daria d’Antonio, the festival’s technical award. This week, Italian media reported that T-shirts have begun circulating around Naples with “I like Sorrentino” and “I like Parthenope,” and latest figurines for Christmas creches, for which Neapolitan artisans are famous, featuring one among the film’s characters.
Sorrentino himself found adoring fans looking for selfies and autographs this week during a special screening of the film in Palermo, Sicily.
It’s the newest brush of recent cinematic attention for Naples, the backdrop for the HBO television series “My Brilliant Friend” based on the best-selling quartet of novels by Elena Ferrante.
Sorrentino’s last feature film, “The Hand of God,” was also based in Naples and featured one other sacred but secular icon to Neapolitans, Maradona. Before that, he made a splash along with his 10-episode series “The Young Pope,” starring Jude Law as an improbable and controversial pope, which was followed by “The New Pope,” starring John Malkovich.
A yr after the initial HBO and Sky series began airing in Italy in late 2016, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano finally offered generally positive reviews despite what it called the “frivolous,” ’’caustic” and “grotesque” way it painted the Vatican.
L’Osservatore Romano hasn’t commented on “Parthenope.”
The Vatican is a perennial topic for directors, with a number of movies in recent times specializing in the papacy including Nanni Moretti’s “Habemus Papam,” Netflix’s “The Two Popes” and most recently “Conclave” starring Ralph Fiennes.
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