"Loro" by Paolo Sorrentino: an unfortunate but beautiful fantasy film about Silvio Berlusconi

"Loro" is a film by Paolo Sorrentino about Silvio Berlusconi, the politics and media mogul who served four times as the Prime Minister of Italy. This is the first Sorrentino painting that was not sponsored by Medusa Film owned by Berlusconi. I think that the Italian director turned out to be a spectacular and in some places funny film, the plot of which, however, falls apart.

The idea was perfect. One of the most famous Italian directors, the owner of the Oscars and the creator of the acclaimed "The Young Pope" Paolo Sorrentino makes a film about the odious politics and businessperson Silvio Berlusconi. Such a project simply had no right to fail. However, something went wrong.

The first sign was the Cannes Film Festival, which showed almost all previous Sorrentino films in the competition, starting with "The Consequences of Love", but refused to do so. There was a conspiracy theories about the political background of such a decision. Then came the numbers from the Italian hire; to say the least disappointing. The producers decision to split the film into two full-length films - and thus collect the box office twice - turned against Sorrentino. Neither critics nor viewers showed any enthusiasm, everyone spoke in one voice about the length of the four-hour picture. As a result, for the world rental version mounted for two and a half hours. Festival fate at the picture did not work out.

Of course, all these are technical details. Still, it is interesting why this time the triumph of triumph did not happen at the spoiler of fate Sorrentino. After all, there were reliable guarantees - and the provocative theme, and the permanent camera operator of the director, the virtuoso Luca Bigazzi and his favorite actor Toni Servillo in the lead role, and, finally, the crowd of half-dressed and very naked beauties. By the way, it was they, not Berlusconi, who gave the film a name. The mysterious "loro" is just the pronoun "they" in Italian; even more than the hero, the director is interested in the eyes of those around him. The distributors had a reason not to translate this word, because there is a pun in it. "Loro" is also "lʼoro", "gold". In addition, the battered wisdom of "not all that gold that glitters" would ideally fit "Loro" as a slogan for a poster. After all, everything here sparkles, shines and shimmers with a clearly fake brilliance.

The first problem of the film is precisely this: in the challenging spectacular visuality, which is also characteristic of all previous works of the Sorrentino-Bigazzi tandem, but here it is brought to its apotheosis. "Loro" is so beautiful that it surpasses even the best advertising samples shot by the great masters of cinema. This is the glamor of the highest standard: when the mockery of the glossy shell of show business and politics ("Isn’t it the same thing?" - as the director asks rhetorically) stops being read as a parody, sincerely admiring empty-headed social lions, lionesses and lionesses.

Focus is clear. Insisting on the primacy of form over content, the filmmaker postulates: this is how the powerful people of the world are made - aesthetics are more important to them than ethics. However, there is also a spectator who has his own interests. In the theater there are intermissions with a buffet, you can get out of the gallery at any time and here the perfect construction of the frame, the play of light and the naked statists frozen in tired postures have to be admired for several hours in a row.

The plot of "Loro" is rudimentary. At the beginning of the film, the handsome swindler Sergio (superstar of the Italian cinema Riccardo Scamarcio) decides to be acquainted with the most influential person in the country and, in order to attract his attention, gathers at his villa - right in front of the villa Berlusconi - several dozen first-class prostitutes. About one and a half hours, we wait patiently for this thing to be stuck together. Then Berlusconi really comes to visit Sergio. This is followed by a hasty digest epilogue of another forty minutes, and the film ends. With all the length of the spectacle, it leaves the viewer unsatisfied: it will not be enough.

Strictly speaking, "Loro" could be made quite a radical gesture. For example, to completely clear it of dialogues, replacing them with facial expressions and singing (yes, they sometimes sing here), turn it into an exclusively visual experiment suitable for exhibiting in the museum of modern art. But Sorrentino unsuccessfully tries at the same time to tell about a certain stage of Berlusconi’s career, to give an outline of his relationship with a bored and dissatisfied wife, to hint at bribing political allies. In a separate storyline, these details are not glued together; the lyrical epic story of a meeting with prostitutes interferes.

The second basic problem is the main character. Servillo, not only a broad actor, but also an expert on the comedy del arte, theater director Carlo Goldoni not for the first time turns his face into a mask, this time smiling. This Berlusconi is impenetrable, no matter how tried to find out its secret mentioned in the name "they". However, if during the first hour it intrigues, then it begins to tire.

Whether Sorrentino was elementary afraid of extrapolations and personal attacks, avoiding a streamlined impressionistic portrait (the Berusconi company Medusa Film financed all the projects of the director, except for this). Either he tried for a long time, but he could not find the key to his hero. It is a shame, because with another former head of the Italian government, Giulio Andreotti who was played by Servillo in the wonderful comedy "Il divo", the trick was a success. In addition, in the portrait of fictional Pope Pius XIII, Sorrentino successfully imagined a mystery policy, intriguing the audience and not giving answers to the main questions. The difference is that in "The Young Pope" he knew these answers himself, and in "Loro", it seems he does not know.