Parthenope 4K 2024 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

1950. In the home of a wealthy Neapolitan family, a luxurious carriage-bed was delivered straight from Versailles for a baby about to be born right in the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. A girl was born, and she was named Partenope in honor of the ancient Greek nymph whose name was once called Naples. Perfect in everything the girl lived to the fullest: changed lovers and hobbies, tried to start a career as an actress, studied to be an anthropologist and danced until morning. The brilliant life of the favorite of fate overshadowed only one event - the suicide of his brother Raphael, faded in the rays of bright Partenope.

Review 4K Movie

Paolo Sorrentino as a director has come as close as possible to being considered the heir to the great Federico Fellini. “Partenope” praises Naples instead of Rome and admires a woman rather than a man, but in its spirit, in its aesthetic level, it is ‘Sweet Life’ in color.

Last year I re-watched Fellini's masterpiece at the Artistic Theater, the black-and-white version in the original language with subtitles - it was an aesthetic delight. Similar feelings were evoked by “Partenope”, but unfortunately we went to see it in another theater (more about the reasons for regret in post scriptum).

Celeste Dalla Porta in all the static pictures in the public domain is a completely ordinary, not the most beautiful girl, in Moscow I would not have paid attention to her. Sorrentino's magic is that on the screen she not only illustrates the freshness and charm of youth in her twenties, but also perfectly transforms into the austere beauty of a mature thirty-year-old woman.

In the context of the comparison with “Happy Life,” however, as well as outside of it, Sorrentino has two flaws, for each of which I will reduce one point. Nietzsche, in his essay “On the Usefulness and Harm of History for Life,” wrote “He who cannot stand still on the threshold of a moment, forgetting all the past, who cannot stand on one point like the goddess of victory without vertigo and fear, will never know what happiness is...”. Sorrentino, unlike Fellini, could not freeze at the threshold of the moment, he wanted to show the final story.

The fate of the protagonist ends logically, the problem is that old age ends the fate of any woman, there is nothing extraordinary about it, and, in my opinion, in a story about perfection, old age is inappropriate, a priori, it should remain behind the scenes. Marcello doesn't expect anything good after the finale of “The Sweet Life” and Fellini explicitly says so in the last frames of the picture, but he freezes on the threshold of the moment together with the viewer - and that's fine.

The second flaw is more obvious, the portrayal of the professor's child, I won't describe it to avoid spoilers, but for me it's a completely unnecessary episode in the movie, acutely dissonant with the logic and aesthetics of the narrative. I'll be honest, I don't understand why Sorrentino filmed it and why he filmed it that way... maybe the problem is me - I won't say otherwise. In all other episodes, the movie is great and definitely worthy of your attention.