Parthenope, 202512 Images
“Making this movie was difficult,” says Celeste Dalla Porta, the 27-year-old star of Paolo Sorrentino’s eccentric, decades-spanning drama Parthenope. “I was always anxious. The most difficult thing was building the character of Parthenope. I needed Paolo to help me create this very sensual person.”
Dalla Porta’s admission of nerves is unexpected: in Parthenope, the actor exudes extreme calmness and coolness, even in the few scenes she’s not smoking a cigarette. Shot in Sorrentino’s typically ostentatious style, Parthenope doesn’t really walk, she glides; her entrance to the film is stepping out of the sea in a bikini, removing sand from her foot, and then greeting a man whose jaw is to the floor. Wherever she strolls in Naples, Milan, and Capri, Parthenope is propositioned by men and women. Even her brother barely hides his lust for her.
However, Parthenope is also the smartest person in the room at all times, including in her anthropology studies, late-night conversations with John Cheever (Gary Oldman in a bizarre cameo), and eventual career as a university professor. When Sorrentino floods the frame with outlandish, sometimes fantastical imagery, Parthenope has to exist within a surreal universe while grounding it with recognisable emotions. With such an impossible role, whom do you cast? If you’re Sorrentino, you pick an unknown name.
Still, with only one film credit, Dalla Porta already finds herself getting recognised in public. “It happens,” she tells me over a video call from Rome a few days before the film’s UK theatrical release. “But people tend to be discrete about it.” After premiering at Cannes last year, Parthenope was a box-office hit in Italy, earning more than Sorrentino’s previous films and ending 2024 as the country’s second-biggest Italian feature. Parthenope, like much of Sorrentino’s oeuvre, has divided critics, but even the naysayers agree that Dalla Porta is a revelation.
“Paolo didn’t think I was perfect for the film,” says the actor through an interpreter, sometimes answering for herself in English. “There were limitations. I’m not from Naples [like Parthenope], and I hadn’t been in a feature film before.” Dalla Porta’s only prior movie experience was as an extra on The Hand of God, which earned Sorrentino an Oscar nomination in 2022. Her scene was ultimately cut. “Paolo had to guide me on Parthenope, and shape the role for me. It was a very big leap of trust.”
Dalla Porta depicts the character’s evolution from 18 to 35, an arc that involves tragedy, an unwanted pregnancy, and more academia politics than what’s indicated by the idyllic marketing materials. “It was more difficult playing Parthenope when she’s younger, because she’s influenced by the people around her,” says Dalla Porta. “When she’s older, she has a more defined identity.” In preparation, the actor went through a lengthy rehearsal process and was asked by Sorrentino to watch Stefania Sandrelli’s early films. “He also suggested I watch Closer because Natalie Portman’s character is very sensual and delicate.”
There are movies where the sexual intercourse is much more explicit. In Parthenope, it’s more about eroticism than sexuality. The relationship between Parthenope and the male characters is more about seduction than sex
Over his filmmaking career, Sorrentino hasn’t been known for writing women. The Italian auteur has instead conjured up memorable male figures: Jep Gambardella in the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty; Jude Law’s winking cardinal in The Young Pope; Sean Penn dressed up as Robert Smith of The Cure in This Must Be the Place. On the poster for Youth, the image is mostly taken up by a naked woman whose bare arse is visible, but not her face.
Parthenope is thus an entirely new chapter for Sorrentino, even if it’s still populated with men gawping at women. The script, which Sorrentino wrote on his own, is based somewhat on the myth of Parthenope, a Greek siren whose drowned body led to the birth of Naples. In the film, effectively a coming-of-age story, Parthenope is born in 1950 and introduced in 1968 as an 18-year-old at the centre of an almost incestuous love triangle with her childhood friend Sandrino (Dario Aita) and her jealous brother Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo). In a chance meeting with the writer John Cheever, she’s advised that her beauty opens doors – which leads to Parthenope advancing as an anthropology student, taking meetings as a potential movie star, and being invited to mingle with underground criminals.
The plot of Parthenope is, really, a succession of outrageous events, rather like Sorrentino’s two best films, The Great Beautyand Youth. Come to think of it, Parthenope could also be called The Great Beauty or Youth if those titles weren’t already taken. The film is obsessed with juxtapositions, too. Parthenope visits slums, kisses a disfigured woman, and witnesses a live sex show consisting of two unwilling teenagers from warring mafia families.
Are shocking scenes a blast to shoot? Or just more nerves? “I don’t think the sex scenes were provocative,” Dalla Porta counters. “There are movies where the sexual intercourse is much more explicit. In Parthenope, it’s more about eroticism than sexuality. The relationship between Parthenope and the male characters is more about seduction than sex.” In another sequence, Parthenope has sex with a cardinal in a cathedral, prompting a religious miracle upon orgasm. Was she affected by the backlash in Italy from some outraged Catholics? “It was something we expected. It’s a very provocative scene.”
Otherwise, the conversation around Parthenope concerns Dalla Porta’s stellar screen presence and audience’s curiosity over what she will do next. She’s too superstitious to share her next possible projects, but in the next few days she might have a Best Actress trophy: Parthenope is nominated in 15 categories at the David di Donatello Awards, effectively the Italian Oscars. Acting aside, the film’s attempt to subvert the male gaze has also inevitably led to debates.
Where The Hand of God memorably has Filippo Scotti crying his heart out, Parthenope is about a woman who frequently brings grown men to tears. Both dramas are also Sorrentino’s only two features with Daria D’Antonio, a female cinematographer. “Daria’s gaze was very important for me as it allowed me to work with a female perspective,” says Dalla Porta. “The male gaze was very present in the movie’s period of the 60s and 70s. It’s still here today. But Parthenope’s gaze is a way of seeing the male gaze. The male gaze is seen through Parthenope’s eyes.”
Parthenope is in UK cinemas on May 2.
