Paolo Sorrentino is back in Cannes for the sixth time with “ Parthenope ,” a love letter to his native Naples but also, as he puts it, a film about his “missed youth” that comes as a natural follow-up to his autobiographical “The Hand of God.” Perhaps more significantly, “Parthenope” – an epic spanning several decades – is Sorrentino’s first female-centric film. Why? “In thinking of a modern hero, it came naturally to me that it would be a heroine, not a man,” he tells Variety.
Let’s start with the film’s titular protagonist, Parthenope. Of course, Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans.” My impression is that, after returning from Rome to Naples to make “The Hand of God,’ your native city drew you further back into its fold.
It’s a bit more complex, actually, not necessarily just linked to Naples. “Parthenope” was born from a series of long-simmering thoughts and emotional changes. But it’s true that it begins with “The Hand of God,” the film with which I became a grown up.
Like all directors, I always do the math of how many films I have in me. And in thinking about what films I had left to make, starting from “The Hand of God,” I began to choose those that pointed toward the essence of what interests me. That is the process.
I started with “The Hand of God” where I was interested in describing my youth, and it continued – or developed in parallel – with this other thing that interested me which is.