A Siren Born of Sea and Sun
Myth and water begin Parthenope (2024), by Paolo Sorrentino. In 1950, a girl is born in Naples. Emerging from the sea, she is baptized by the swell of myth and luxury. Parthenope is the name of the ancient siren of Greece, and of the Naples. She embodies beauty, desire, loss, and the harshest paradoxes of Naples.
The film tracks Parthenope over the decades and draws from numerous aspects of her life. The reader is taken through school years filled with the – at the time – distraction of love, betrayal, moral-ambivalence, and – at the time – academically aged years. Parthenope’s grief is shaped by her relationships with brother Raimondo and with Sandrino, the friend who is the brother of the servants. In a later part of the film, her career in anthropology, her flirtation in a passing sense with acting, and her personal losses in relationships, encounter with power through a controversial church figure, all lead to a reckoning with identity and belonging.
Parthenope the Woman, Parthenope the City
Sorrentino uses the life of Parthenope as an allusion. Napes — sun-drenched, steeped in myths, chaotic, and decadent — is backdrop and reflection. The almost inseperable stage of Parthenope as a young woman is: raw beauty, innocence, mischief, and yearning. As the years take their course, she grows observant, critical, and weary. The beauty which once granted her desire and freedom, now becomes a burden to objectify.
Sorrentino’s life in the academy, first in anthropology, then the studying miracles of the lost, and finally the crossing the mythical beauty. The academy was supposed to offer the life lessons of belief, mischief and beauty matter, but he is reluctant to allow the lessons settle the mind. The then tragic: the death of Score’s Raimondo and the betrayal of youth, lost pregnancies, and creeping disillusionment. The was beauty, but it was never enough, and the mastery always lost.
The Casting and Faces Behind the Frame
The first major film role of Celeste Dalla Porta as Parthenope. The young actress is endowed the emotional core and must juxtapose youthful innocence with later reflective depth. There is also a strong supporting cast: an American writer figure played by Gary Oldman, anthropology professor Devoto Marotta played by Silvio Orlando, and others: Stefania Sandrelli, Luisa Ranieri, Peppe Lanzetta, and Isabella Ferrari.
For Daria D’Antonio’s cinematography, the focus was on Naples and the various representations of its light, sea, and textures over the decades. Beauty and fashion, in a sense, become a part of the narrative, thanks to the costume designs of Carlo Poggioli in collaboration with Anthony Vaccarello of Saint Laurent. This collaboration created both the allurement and the artifice of the fashion as part of the story.
Controversy and Hype Originating from just a domestic screening, Parthenope enjoyed its fair share of cinematographic escapism and narrative frivolity with its sun-drenched, costume-clad streets set against the shimmering waters. Controversy was, however, not far away with one of the scenes depicting the miracle of San Gennaro. This initiated a tirade of backlash from some religious audiences.
Memory and Myth Sorrentino states that the film Parthenope is a love letter to Naples and a meditation on the fine line of growing up, portraying the tension of myth and reality, image and substance as Napoli is not merely a setting but a character, mysterious, theatrical, and paradoxical. Naples is not just a setting, but a character: mysterious, theatrical and paradoxical.
Location design focused on different life stages as production was carried out in Naples and Capri. Capri represented youth and freedom, while Naples was for roots, responsibility, and aging. The production design in detail chronicled multiple decades, while the costumes illustrated the concepts of beauty, aging, and desire as well as the more fleeting aspects of all three.
For Celeste Dalla Porta, the role was transformative. At 26, she immersed herself in the character, growing with Parthenope both emotionally and physically. The role required the actor to be emotionally exposed, precise, and to command the screen with an extraordinary presence.
Love, Loss, and What It Means to Be Seen
The film navigates the paradox of being desired and being truly known. Parthenope is beautifully captivating, yet subjected to scrutiny and objectification. The representation of conflicting narratives is rich and complex; and the public and private, in the form of academic career, sexual and romantic relationships, and visibility of the self, integration of inner life, and self.
The loss of her brother, Raimondo, is an early wound, highlighting the limit of beauty alone. The complex relationships and conflicts with power, as well as the passage of time, deal with agency, the morality of life, compromises, and unresolved feminism.
The presence of time deepens the narrative; the film chronologically captures her youth and later years as a professor, showing what survives — memories, love, regret, the influence of teaching, and the love of teaching. The final scenes illustrate the need for reflection, connection to others, and the complex relationship of myth and reality, bridging the two.
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