An average movie

Paolo Sorrentino is quite popular with our film club so it was pretty cool to see again his new directorial effort together. His previous directorial effort, ‘Parthenope’, did receive some mixed reactions (I didn’t care much for it) but everybody in our film club seemed to really enjoy his last movie. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I was apparently the sole exception after all. Indeed, as far as I was concerned, I thought it was never really interesting and/or entertaining. First of all, Sorrentino’s movies are usually quite impressive visually speaking but, in this area, I didn’t see anything really noteworthy or remarkable. However, a bigger issue was that I felt very little connection with the main topic. Indeed, I know very little about the Italian political system but, what I did know before watching this movie, was that I had never heard of an Italian president before (the current one is Sergio Mattarella and I have absolutely no clue who this is). Eventually, from what I understood from this movie and from my research, the president in this country has mostly a symbolic role with only slightly more power than the Kings of the United Kingdom or of the Netherlands for example. In this movie, they made a big deal about him signing (or not) a bill legalizing euthanasia but the Italian Parliament should have had some major impact about any decision regarding this law anyway. Eventually, I think I would have been more invested in this story if they had focused instead on the prime minister who is presumably the most powerful political figure in this country. At least, there is no doubt that Toni Servillo, who was working with Sorrentino for the 6th time already, was really good here. Indeed, the guy is always charismatic and he didn’t disappoint here. I especially appreciated his relationship with his daughter. Indeed, even if they felt they didn’t know each other, they worked together and, as a result, they spent a lot of time together and they looked more alike then they thought. Anyway, even if this movie never dazzled me, I have to admit that it was still a decent watch though.