La Grazia: less is more in Paolo Sorrentino’s quietly powerful political drama

• Reviewed from the 2025 Venice Film Festival

Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film La Grazia often feels like a reaction to the critical reception of his last OTT outing, Parthenope (2024). Obviously, this is unlikely. Parthenope did well commercially in Italy, and this film was already in production when most reviews hit. But one thing is for sure, La Grazia is Sorrentino turned down from eleven to six. And with the volume more bearable, we can actually hear what he’s saying.

Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo plays fictional President Mariano, aka “Reinforced Concrete” for his habit of being difficult to crack, an ageing leader in the last days of his term. He must consider three important decisions as he whiles away the time smoking cigarettes on the roof of the Quirinale Palace, exchanging barbs with his childhood friends who inhabit his inner circle, and hankering after his dead wife. This grief is complicated by a persistent nagging horror that she betrayed him forty years ago with one of those childhood friends and now justice minister (Massimo Venturiello).

Some context for non-Italian viewers is required. The President, as the Head of State, has great power according to the constitution – a series of articles from the constitution are given as title cards at the beginning of the film – but in fact the real power lies with the elected Prime Minister. That said, with parliamentary politics frequently unstable, the President is often required to step in and negotiate different crises. Perhaps because of this, the President tends to be above party politics and – at least recently – enjoyed huge popularity ratings. This was the case with the last three Presidents: Carlo Ciampi, Giorgio Napolitano and the incumbent Sergio Mattarella. In this light, Servillo’s Mariano is a realistic portrait of a man adored by his staff and admired by the country as a whole. When he visits the opening of the Scala, he is reverse-heckled, when someone shouts out their support for having saved the country from the latest parliamentary crisis: “You saved us from that fool.”

The power of pardon, and the signing or not signing of a law – delaying it, essentially – are among other significant powers the President holds. And it is these issues which remain on the President’s desk in the film. There are two cases of pardon for murder, one a woman who stabbed her husband in his sleep and the other a professor who strangled his wife, and a law which would legalise euthanasia. Himself a respected jurist, Mariano is aided by his lawyer daughter, Dorothea, played with a strained exasperation by Anna Ferzetti, who is frustrated by what she sees as his ducking of controversial actions. His argument is that bureaucracy’s very function is actually to slow things down so rash decisions are not made. As the first quarter of the twenty-first century ends, this idea feels almost revolutionary. Viva Bureaucracy!

And so it goes with Sorrentino’s cinematic approach. Gone are the lurid excesses of Il Divo (2008), The Great Beauty (2013) and Loro (2018), films in which any insight or critique often got drowned in the glitter showers, banging soundtrack and Bunga-Bunga rhythm of it all. In La Grazia, we have Sorrentino’s most graceful film. Scenes play out at dinner tables and in quiet rooms, in the stable of his loyal security chief (Orlando Cinque) as they regard the dying of their favourite horse, Elvis. His daughter keeps him on a diet of quinoa and white fish, and that could be an analogy for the film: diet Sorrentino. But less proves more as the scenes in which Sorrentino lets himself go stand out as all the more remarkable: as with the opening, which shows the Frecce Tricolori (the Italian equivalent of the Red Arrows) flying over the Roman skyline or the contemporary dance performance Mariano watches while brooding on his jealousies. His friend Coco Valori (Milvia Marigliano) provides enough acerbic wit to keep the film from becoming overly sentimental.

It must also be noted that Servillo and Sorrentino have now established a creative partnership of huge quality and duration. In keeping with the film, his performance is low-key – one of watchfulness and thought, meditation and regret. Ultimately, it is about the radical possibility of solutions, acceptance and going gentle into that good night.