Movie Review: Loro

Loro ** / *****

Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino.

Written by: Paolo Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello.

Starring: Toni Servillo (Silvio Berlusconi / Ennio Doris), Elena Sofia Ricci (Veronica Lario), Riccardo Scamarcio (Sergio Morra), Kasia Smutniak (Kira), Euridice Axen (Tamara), Fabrizio Bentivoglio (Santino Recchia), Roberto De Francesco (Fabrizio Sala), Dario Cantarelli (Paolo Spagnolo), Anna Bonaiuto (Cupa Caiafa), Giovanni Esposito (Mariano Apicella), Ugo Pagliai (Mike Bongiorno), Ricky Memphis (Riccardo Pasta), Duccio Camerini (Rocco Barbaro), Yann Gael (Michel Martinez), Lorenzo Gioielli (Senatore Valori), Alice Pagani (Stella), Caroline Tillette (Violetta Saba), Mattia Sbragia (Fedele Confalonieri), Massimiliano Tortora (Martino), Milvia Marigliano (Signora Telefonata), Roberto Herlitzka (Crepuscolo).

 

I think we’re at the point now where we have to admit that what Paolo Sorrentino really likes to do is film scenes with a lot of beautiful, half clothed (or less) young women gyrating slowly. His films may be about other things – have larger themes – but whether it’s The Great Beauty or Youth or his latest, Loro it seems like he puts the most energy into those scenes of those beautiful young women dancing. It’s telling that in all three of those films, those young women are not the center of the movie – they all focus on older men – and those scenes of those young women are meant to represent something else – the emptiness of that lifestyle, the fleeting nature of youth and beauty, or the rotting core of a politician who only thinks of himself and his own desires. But still, those scenes are there – and the women very rarely come into focus.

 

Perhaps I noticed it more in Loro than in the past because Loro is his first film that I really, truly did not like. I wasn’t as high on The Great Beauty as many were – it won the Foreign Language Film Oscar after all – but I couldn’t help but think that the film was a slightly warmed over, and way too repetitive, homage to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita – a film that looked great, but kind of made its point early, and then repeated it throughout (the repetition is part of the point I know – but still). And in Youth, it was about these two older men – giants in their field – dealing with their legacy, and impending death. Neither film was great – but they were entertaining and engaging – at least up to a point.

 

Loro though lost me kind of early. The film’s subject is Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi – a kind of Italian Trump before Trump was Trump. The film takes place in the years between his last two stints as Italian President 2006-2009 – and basically makes the point (again and again) that he is basically a corrupt, amoral pervert (we know that going in) – but the film may well about two people coming that same realization. The first person is Sergio Morra (Riccardo Scamarcio) – who is the central character in the film at first – a small time hustler, who thinks the only way to make real money – to be who he really wants to be, is to get close to Berlusconi. He pretty mortgages his future in order to throw a huge party, with the most beautiful women, in Berlusconi’s direct sightline at his country house. The second person is Berlusconi’s then wife – who had been with him for more than a decade, had a few of his children and has stuck by him, despite all the charges of corruption and constant womanizing. Their imploding marriage is kind of what makes Sergio’s attempts falter.

 

For Italian audiences, Sorrentino made two films – released just about a month apart in theaters – but for the international audience, he has cut them together to make a single, two-a-half-hour long film, which is about an hour shorter than the two films combined. This likely increases the disjointed feeling the film has – as it kind of makes some rather large jumps at times, leaving plot threads and characters dangling for so long you think the film is never going to get back to them, until eventually they do come back around.

 

I do think I liked the part of small time hustler Sergio trying to get into Berlusconi’s good graces. He is a small time con, who talks a good game, and really does try and hustle his way in. His story is fairly clear. When the subject shifts to Berlusconi himself – of course played by Sorrentino favorite Toni Servillo (who played a President for Sorrentino before in what remains his best film, Il Divo) the film isn’t as good. Perhaps it plays with differently to an Italian audience, who knows the ins and outs of the scams and schemes, but it all felt a little too vague for me. The film is at its best when it focuses more on Berlusconi going about his day-to-day schemes – like a long phone call, where he lies about who he is and sells someone on one of those schemes. There are a couple of standout scenes late in the film – one where the target of Berlusconi’s lust rejects him by telling him his breath smells like her grandpa’s – i.e. like an old man – and when his wife finally confronts him.

 

As per usual with Sorrentino, the film really does look great. He takes great care in pulling out all the filmmaking stops he knows, and throwing them on screen, on after another. And those shots of all of those, gyrating girls really do make the whole look as intended – a portrait of debauchery writ large.

 

And yet, I kind of hope that if Sorrentino keeps making these films, he at point allows the young women he is so fond of displaying naked and gyrating into real characters. There is some of that here – where Sergio’s right hand woman Kira for example starts to realize she is aging out of being able to do this, and doesn’t like it – or in that aforementioned scene of the young woman who rejects Berlusconi. But with them on display so much, I do wish he would take the care in their characters that he so obviously lavishes on the older men who watch them do so intently and creepily. Sorrentino seems to know that those men are creeps – but if he doesn’t change something soon, he’s going to become them.