They have always been there in Paolo Sorrentino’s cinema two recurring themes: power and love, which in turn is a form of power. A gentle power, for goodness sake. But always power. Gracepremiering at the cinema until January 1st, only in the morning, and regularly scheduled from January 15th with PiperFilm, is no exception. The protagonist, Mariano De Santis played by Toni Servillo, nicknamed Cemento Armato, is the President of the Republic. His daughter, Dorotea, played by Anna Ferzetti, is a jurist like him. And in the last months of his mandate, he lent him a hand in reviewing two requests for mercy, one from a man who killed his wife, supported by the entire community of his country, and the other from a woman who killed her husband. And then there is also the bill on euthanasia to be reviewed, which the President of the Republic should sign.
As compared to Parthenope ea It was the hand of God, Grace it is a film that focuses more on words, on the interactions between the actors, on these brilliant dialogues full of funny lines. But here too there are some wonderful scenes. Photography, like that of Parthenope and that of It was the hand of Godwas edited by Daria D’Antonio. And if in It was the hand of God chiaroscuro and light played a fundamental role Parthenope the explosions of natural light and the more dimly lit interiors were decisive, here there is a constant search for blue: that of the sky, that of the horizon; that of the eyes of some characters. The De Santis played by Servillo is a serious man, by his own admission boring, who he can’t help but think to his missing wife. Several times, during the film, he addresses her directly, shouting, raising his voice, accusing her of not having told him the truth.
Here is the other great theme of Grace it is this: the truth. Sorrentino plays, and not in a manner of speaking, with nuances and small things, with the way in which the same story, depending on the point of view of the person telling it, can change. Setting it during the last months of the President of the Republic’s mandate is yet another way that Sorrentino has found to move within a defined and contained dimension (a bit like he did with The Young Pope e The New Pope: we are in a non-place, with its rules and characteristics, where the characters move at a different speed compared to the rest of the world). But apart from the truth, Grace And a film about love that this man still feels for his wife, on the relationship that unites him with his daughter, on the obsession that, after a long time, he continues to feel: he knows that his wife, forty years earlier, cheated on him; and wants to know with whom. He doubts everyone, even his best friend. He asks Coco Valori, played wonderfully by Milvia Marigliano, to reveal the name of his wife’s lover; he adjures it. But she, until shortly before the end of the film, does not give in; he doesn’t tell her. «From that moment on I stopped living»De Santis implores her.
After choral films in their own way, Sorrentino returns to an almost two-person dynamic, constructing scenes and situations in which words count, the smallest hints, where a grimace can make a huge difference. Sorrentino has always been a phenomenal writer (find out, if you haven’t already read it, his They’re All Right published by Feltrinelli: it’s almost a manifesto of his vision, including cinematographic). And no Grace returns to fully express its own bright vervefull of irony and sarcasm, without forgetting the most tense and moving moments. We repeat: Coco Valori. She is often at the center of the funniest scenes, with this impetuous, decisive character, in stark contrast to the more calm and contained nature of the protagonist. Anna Ferzetti’s Dorothea is found halfway between the two: he spent the last years of his life taking care of his father, both privately and publicly, supporting him in decisions and in the study of the law; and somehow manages to maintain a certain veil of mystery. Like his father, we too are surprised when, for a second, he shows off the tattoo on his wrist. We, like the father, flinch when she slams a file on a table, clearly angry. We thought we understood her, but instead inside her there is a whole world yet to be discovered. And it is an aspect that is effectively expressed precisely by Ferzetti’s interpretation: which first becomes confident and decisive, then more intimidated and insecure; in the end even “broken”.
The last months of the President of the Republic’s mandate quickly transform into something else, and this is important to underline. Precisely because Gracein its linearity, in its narrative strength, is never just one thing. It is a journey, a reflection in images; a big heart-to-heart confession about very current topics like euthanasia. And it is also a compendium, in some ways, of cinema: which, like law, comes close to the truth, courts it, but does not reach never to own it. The characters themselves end up in an almost metanarrative dimension: the man in prison for killing his wife says he is an actor, that he has always acted when he taught at school; and with good actors, he explains, it’s never easy to know when they stop pretending. Here we are again, then: the truth returns. What is it, because we want it so much (or too much, as the cuirassier who acts as bodyguard to De Santis, played by Orlando Cinque, specifies); what a difference it can make.
Grace it is also a film about lightness: Sorrentino uses the image, quite difficult to misunderstand, of an astronaut who is in space and floating in mid-air. But lightness, perhaps, is something else. It’s about regaining control of yourself, it’s coming back to life. Despite his obsession with his wife’s betrayal, De Santis is a resolved character: he demonstrates this at the end, during one of the most beautiful scenes of the entire film (which is a dialogue). And there is also a beautiful reflection on doubt and its importance. A film, sometimes, is just a film: and therefore it begins and ends within an hour and a half, two hours, to leave room for something else. Wanting to attribute to it other meanings and other purposes at all costs is, from more than one point of view, wrong. Yet with Sorrentino and with Grace not doing so would be an even bigger mistake.
Sorrentino is always Sorrentino: there is that Neapolitan indolence, light, which envelops everything, which shines in the character of De Santis, which is channeled in an exceptional way by Servillo (together with Silvio Orlando, he is our best, most capable actor, most ready to use the technique and the muscles developed on the stage of a theater to delve into a story, to appropriate it, and to come out of it consciously anyway: never the same, never the same, but not even completely anonymous). The chatter on the palace walkways, between the President of the Republic and his bodyguard; the bickering with his daughter; the very heated discussions with her lifelong friend, an art expert with a pointed tongue; comparisons with other politicians, former schoolmates; and then the cigarettes smoked in silence, the songs (like The girls are crying by Guè) listen at full volume; there rediscovered joyparadoxically, in a tear: they are all fragments of a larger picture.
The cinematic dimension of Grace it is a concrete, dense dimension that fluctuates between the majestic (another president, older than the protagonist, who fights against the rain, who falls, who gets up, who wins his battle for the moment; filming in the Piedmont countryside, shrouded in fog, divided between the softer blue of the horizon and the more intense blue of the sky) and the essential. A dimension that alternates between reason and rationality, between what must be felt and what instead can be studied; between being parents and being children; between the courage of doubt and the fear we feel for uncertainty. At the end of his mandate, De Santis feels he has nothing else to say or do; says that freedomfor a man of his age, has a relative value. And instead he discovers that he can take back control of his life.
Regarding the performances in this film, there is one more thing to say. A rather important one. In the theater, we don’t recognize the king because, banally, he says he is or wears a papier-mâché crown; we recognize him by the way others, those around him, the rest of the actors, treat him. And therefore: Servillo becomes the President of the Republic not only because he says he is, because he moves and speaks like a President of the Republic (or at least, in the way we believe a President of the Republic should move and speak). It is for work what the actors around him do, for the way they look at him, listen to him, peek at him (there is a beautiful scene in which De Santis/Servillo is in the waiting room for the families of prisoners in a prison; and he becomes President of the Republic thanks to the glances that the woman who is sitting next to him gives him).
Thank you at incredible work of Ferzetti, then, Servillo becomes the father. A father who perhaps doesn’t know his children, who probably doesn’t know exactly who their friends are or how they fill their daily lives, but who understands the most important thing: at a certain point you stop leading and start following; at a certain point it is the parents who have to listen to their children and not vice versa. Here lies, perhaps, a very first embryo of truth. Sorrentino lets these concepts slide with enormous naturalness, without rigidifying them, without pushing them forcefully. And then the choices he makes from a directorial point of view are also fundamental. Earlier we talked about the scene in prison. Well. Suddenly, the shots are dirtier, shakier, and photography itself no longer seeks the marvelous essence of space or figures, takes it all back: it also takes up the ugliness, the imperfections, even the – perhaps fearsome concept for cinema – normality. Grace it is not an answer; it is, if anything, a question. The question, indeed. “Whose are our days?”
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