A decades-spanning drama about a young woman born in Naples — the hometown of writer-director Paolo Sorrentino — “ Parthenope ” is an exquisite treatise on cinematic beauty. Chronicling her birth, her youthful teenage summers and the years she spends adrift as a young adult, the film is an intoxicating reflection on the way people and places are seen, and the way they see themselves. Celeste Dalla Porta delivers a beguiling performance as the film’s eponymous subject, a woman of such stunning beauty that people stop and stare.
Her allure is practically disruptive, an idea the camera embodies by introducing her through pristine, symmetrical vistas that appear suddenly, as though they were demanding the edit skip past its dramatic connective tissue. She is named, after all, for the founder of Naples, and one of the six sirens of Green mythology, but Sorrentino maintains a consistent awareness of the ogling idealism he applies to Parthenope. As young lovers and strangers stare at her body, the frame remains transfixed on her expression, one that initially bears the naive allure of a young muse or a cinematic debutante who exists, first and foremost, for the camera’s gaze.
Her beauty, she is told — by a small but surprising character played by Gary Oldman — will open doors and start wars, and neither Della Porta nor Sorrentino shy away from presenting Parthenope as a carefree seductress who revels in her youth. But she wants something more, and is afraid of being .