{"id":187426,"date":"2025-08-30T14:28:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T14:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187426\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T14:28:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T14:28:04","slug":"toni-servillo-in-la-grazia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187426\/","title":{"rendered":"Toni Servillo in ‘La Grazia’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor many years, the Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino<\/a><\/strong> couldn\u2019t miss, making films that were widely embraced by critics and audiences, and, in two cases, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: 2013\u2019s The Great Beauty\u00a0won the best international feature Oscar and 2021\u2019s The Hand of God was nominated for it.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps it\u2019s not a coincidence that both of the aforementioned films, and five others directed by Sorrentino, have starred the great Italian stage-turned-screen actor Toni Servillo<\/a><\/strong> \u2014\u00a0or that Sorrentino\u2019s least well-received film in years, 2024\u2019s Parthenope, was the first one in years that he had without Servillo.<\/p>\n

\n\tSorrentino and Servillo have reunited on La Grazia<\/a>, which opened the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday and then the Telluride Film Festival on Friday, and the good news is that the film \u2014 in the opinion of many, including THR\u2019s film critic<\/a> and myself\u00a0\u2014 marks a return to form for Sorrentino, and features one of Servillo\u2019s most impressive turns yet.<\/p>\n

\n\tServillo plays a brilliant judge-turned-admired president of Italy who is in a reflective mood with just six months remaining in his term. His beloved wife died eight years ago, but she \u2014\u00a0and the extramarital affair that she had 40 years ago \u2014\u00a0still occupies his thoughts every day. His two children \u2014 including a daughter who works closely with him \u2014 harbor resentment towards him. And he can\u2019t seem to make up his mind about anything,\u00a0including and especially whether to sign a bill allowing euthanasia and how to rule on two pardons that have been proposed for people who killed their spouses under murky circumstances.<\/p>\n

\n\tSorrentino previously explored Italian politics \u2014 prime ministers, specifically\u00a0\u2014 in 2008\u2019s Il Divo and 2018\u2019s Loro. But his film that La Grazia most reminds me of is The Great Beauty, which also centers on an aging Roman played by Servillo. The Servillo characters have totally different professions and temperaments, but both are depicted at a moment when they are rethinking and questioning their past, and watching Servillo do that, amidst beautiful settings and a powerful score, is utterly engrossing.<\/p>\n

\n\tLa Grazia will be released by Mubi later this year. It strikes me as more likely than not that the film will be Italy\u2019s submission for the best international feature Oscar competition, and that Servillo could garner some real traction in the best actor Oscar race. Servillo has never been nominated, and it seems to me that that ought to be corrected sooner or later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many years, the Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino couldn\u2019t miss, making films that were widely embraced by critics…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":187427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,104281,224,5337,30988,104282,101960],"class_list":{"0":"post-187426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-grazia","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-paolo-sorrentino","15":"tag-telluride-2025","16":"tag-toni-servillo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115118192329842950","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}