La Gracia (2026)

It's no secret that Paulo Sorrentino is one of my favourite film makers. The way in which he shoots his films is endlessly beautiful, with his home town of Naples as well as Rome being rendered utterly resplendent on the big screen several times. Naples was the last to get the Sorrentino treatment with last year's Parthenope; a luscious looking if uneven film that many critics accused of being far too full of itself. It was far from his best, but lesser Sorrentino is still something to behold, and I found plenty to enjoy. La Gracia sees Sorrentino reunite with his long time acting collaborator Toni Servillo, and the pair of them have combined several times now to produce cinematic greatness. The most notable of these is probably The Great Beauty (2013), a film that won the Best Foreign Language Oscar and starred Servillo as a former journalist and novelist reflecting on his life amidst Rome's decadent social scene. And it's Italy's capital that once again takes centre stage in La Gracia; albeit mainly inside its halls of power as Servillo's President Mariano struggles to decide whether or not to sign a euthanasia bill as well as two high-profile pardons in the last six months of his term. If this sounds vaguely familiar it's possibly because Servillo also played Giulio Andreotti in Sorrentino's stunning biopic of former Italian Prime Minister, 2008's Il Divo. La Gracia is a very different film however, and many critics have been hailing it a return to form following the lukewarm response to Parthenope. And, as much as I liked Parthenope, there's little doubt that this is Sorrentino firing on all cylinders again. La Gracia is a film about grief, regret, and hope, and one that doesn't even attempt to hide its black humour. It's laugh out loud funny on occasion, proving Sorrentino's ability to fuse happy and sad into the most compelling narratives that at first glance might seem like a slog to the uninitiated mind. The end to Mariano's term has led to him reflecting on his time in office, within which he lost his wife and has never quite gotten over her passing. Nor has he managed to escape the knowledge that she was unfaithful to him forty years previously, and tries to coax this knowledge from friends repeatedly in attempt to glean some sort of closure. Anna Ferzetti is wonderfully exasperated as his daughter and long serving grounding force Dorotea (who's also a lawyer), her frustration over his indecision on the bills slowly beginning to spill over as the film progresses. The relationship between the pair is in some ways the heart of the film; she offers him no respite in terms of the infidelity of her mother but remains determined to bring her father some sort of peace before he retires. Every small relationship Mariano has with his aides feels fully rounded and you can feel the history of them in every exchange, while his rapport with his personal protection officer Labaro (Oralando Cinque) who offers him his one forbidden cigarrete each day, feels like the closest Mariano comes to a proper friend. Coco Valori (a quite brilliant display from Milvia Marigliano), Mariano's old school friend- and best friend of his late wife- is supposedly the only person who knows the identity of his wife's former lover, but she swore to her she would never reveal the information to Mariano which eats away at him more and more as he begins to suspect his contemporary Ugo (Massimo Venturiello). The connection between Moriano and Coco leads to one of the film's many beautiful and often melancholy moments later on in the film, one which might well reduce you to tears. Mariano has reached an age and point in life where he wants to know what it was all for and needs a connection to meaning. There are moments when Sorrentino develops the story in characteristically absurd ways; in particular a sequence in which the Portuguese president walks down a red carpet towards Mariano which suddenly begins to be swept away by the wind- as Mariano looks on without expression or reaction, perhaps musing on the futility of it all. Just like The Great Beauty, this is a very Roman film; one that that Sorrentino makes no apologies for as Moriano decides to walk through its streets and baffled inhabitants after leaving office, surrounded by his security detail and gorgeous imagery. It might well be for Moriano but we're right there with him, basking in the city's beauty. La Grazia might have a claim of being a return to convention for Sorrentino to a point, but when has the maestro ever been called as such? You could just as easily make the argument that Parthenope was the most Sorrentino film he's ever made. I don't agree, but it's a fascinating debate nonetheless. The row that I have with myself frequently is what is, in fact, my favourite Sorrentino film? The general consensus amongst cinephiles is that it's probably The Great Beauty, which is undeniably excellent. But I'd just as quickly make a case for Il Divo as well as his staggeringly beautiful autobiographical piece The Hand of God, my favourite film of 2021. And, when the dust settled on the screening of La Grazia that I attended, I realised I was throwing it into the mix to join those aforementioned films. Sure, there might be a hint of bias in there somewhere, but La Grazia is simply an excellent piece of filmmaking by someone who with every film I respect even more. Servillo should have been up for Best Actor at the Oscars (I say it every time he works with Sorrentino and with good reason), but he wasn't; just like La Grazia seemingly didn't warrant consideration either. You should very much give it consideration, just like Sorrentino's entire filmography. He is a genius. 8.3/10