From the baroque excesses of ‘Parthenope’ to the gray double-breasted suit of an aged, end-of-term President of the Republic. A widowed, Catholic president with a thorn in his heart, full of doubts, yet also capable of singing in an alpine choir and a rap song by Gue Pequeno. In short, one cannot say that Paolo Sorrentino does not know how to veer off his artistic path with ‘La grazia’ (The Grace), Italy’s opening film in competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.
As announced, it is a film about love, but also one filled with spleen, missed opportunities, and a desire to reclaim one’s own time. This is the story and its characters. Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo), an imagined President of the Italian Republic, is a widowed Catholic living in the Quirinale Palace with his daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), a jurist like himself. He is a mild-mannered, Christian Democrat at the end of his mandate who must decide on two delicate requests for pardon, both linked to euthanasia. Yet, within his heart remains the great love for his wife Aurora, who died eight years earlier, which is tied to a further doubt that gives him no peace.
Surrounding him are the irreverent art critic Coco Valori (Milvia Marigliano), a long-time friend, as is the ambitious minister Ugo Romani, who would like to run for office after him; a secretary who is not-so-secretly hostile (Roberto Zibbetti); and finally, a black Pope with dreadlocks who rides a scooter.
He suffers greatly, now even falling asleep while praying, and as a Catholic jurist is plagued by doubt over whether it is right to pardon someone who killed his ill wife—a sort of euthanasia operation—and, above all, whether to sign the law that would establish euthanasia as legal.
An obstacle course of high themes, grotesque, and moving scenes, ‘La grazia’ nonetheless possesses a philosophical continuity. It features a man who is no longer young and is tired, and a daughter, Dorotea, still full of passion. Inevitably, it speaks of the passage of time, and thus, not by chance, the film’s catchphrase is, “To whom do the days that remain to us ever belong?” A way of saying many things in one sentence: the days that remain must rightfully belong both to those who no longer wish to live them and to those who have decided to change their lives against all odds.
Among the film’s most grotesque scenes is a telephone call from the president to the director of Vogue, in which he discusses his way of dressing, but then De Santis inevitably begins to talk about how his wife, his great and only love, used to dress.