To appreciate the power and hope of Paolo Sorrentino‘s latest film La Grazia, which opened the 2025 Venice Film Festival in competition, it is important to have some context of some of the past collaborations of the Oscar-winning director and his frequent star Toni Servillo.
In 2008, both gained international fame with Il Divo, in which Servillo gave an award-winning performance as Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time Italian Prime Minister and leader of the Christian-Democratic Party. This was a ruthless power player who dominated Italy’s political scene with an iron fist for the second half of the 20th century. Ten years later Sorrentino would cast Servillo in the flamboyant Loro as the Machiavellian Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, a businessman to whom corruption was not a stranger (sound like anyone we know?). In between, they made the wondrous The Great Beauty, which took the Foreign Language Film Oscar. More recently, Sorrentino has turned to nostalgia for his youth, returning to his beloved Naples for The Hand of God and Parthenope.
But clearly the current political winds in both Italy and America have got this masterful filmmaker again thinking about the government and what it means to be a moral leader — and perhaps why that is becoming such a thing of the past that for the first time he has been forced to create a fictional president. Thus Servillo plays Italian President Mariano DeSantis, an elderly man now in the sunset of his career and in the final six months of his last term. Before he goes he faces some deep moral decisions including two potential pardons and the question of signing a bill legalizing euthanasia.
But before we get to the crux of all that, Sorrentino opens the film by detailing what should be essentially a job description of what a President is responsible for – or is supposed to be responsible for. It is a very dry schoolbook account of his duties, many in concert with Parliament and not simply taken on his own like a king. It is an important preamble before we actually meet the dignified DeSantis as he goes about his days, a man ready to pass the mantle to another generation. In his life now is his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), who is lobbying her father to sign the euthanasia bill, even though his strict Catholic upbringing and beliefs, as well as the Pope’s no less, are against legalizing the right to die. In his own life he is still deeply grieving the recent passing of his wife Aurora, someone whose presence still permeates his life, as well as the nagging question of who she may have had an affair with 40 years earlier, an answer he never got.
And then right in front of him are two distinct petitions for pardons. As a former judge this is something he takes very seriously. One is for Isa Rocca (Linda Messerkliger, who looks ironically just like Ghislaine Maxwell), who is in prison for stabbing her husband 18 times after taking years of abuse from him. She believes she should be pardoned because she views his murder as more an act of euthanasia due to his mental condition. The other is for Cristiana Arpa (Vaslo Mirondola), a schoolteacher saying he doesn’t deserve a pardon but that his students have asked for him. He is in prison for strangling his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife after years where the disease drove her to madness against him. He says he did it out of love. Whether DeSantis will grant these pardons to one, both or neither is skillfully navigated throughout Sorrentino’s scenario in a movie the director says is really about love, and as Mariano reflects on his own life, his love for family and Aurora, as well as country and what it should stand for, that is an apt description.
But in this time of political divide, government corruption and pure hate of those we disagree with, La Grazia is about so much more. The way President DeSantis leaves office, his dignity intact and his wisdom confirmed, leaves us longing for the days when we could look up to our leaders with admiration. Those days seem so behind us in much of the world at the moment, but La Grazia and Sorrentino’s wistful and contemplative creation actually gives us hope all is not lost.
Servillo, playing in a lower key than the real-life inspirations of Il Divo and Loro, delivers a splendid portrayal of a man who has devoted his life to service and the people. A scene where he goes to visit Arpa in prison is remarkable as he insists he sit in the waiting room with other visitors. It is a silent scene as these lower-class citizens casually glance at their president sitting among them, not a word uttered. He is equally touching in another scene going over his late wife’s clothes, describing what made her so beautiful in his eyes. Servillo has never been nominated for an Oscar. He should be for this.
Ferzetti is terrific as a devoted daughter who at the same time wins her father’s respect as an equal in her chosen career. Milvia Marigliano is a hoot as Coco Vulori, an old dear friend with some very loud opinions to express, and maybe the key to helping DeSantis solve his wife’s onetime unfaithfulness. A scene when they are riding home in the limo together is priceless and quite moving. Among the large cast also is Massimo Venturiello, excellent as the foreign minister with his eye on taking over as the next president. And proving this movie is pure fiction, Rufin Doh Zeyenouin is quite fine in his couple of scenes as the motorcycle-riding dreadlocked Black Pope from whom DeSantis seeks advice.
Sorrentino has made some beauties in his career. This is one of his best.
Title: La Grazia
Festival: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
Distributor: Mubi
Director-screenwriter: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Massimo Venturiello, Milvia Marigliano, Vasco Mirondola, Linda Messerklinger, Rubin Doh Zeyenouin, Orlando Cinque
Running time: 2 hr 13 min