Loro

Dir. Paolo Sorrentino 151 Minutes

Italy

2018

Starring: Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kasia Smutniak, Fabrizio Bentivoglio

***/***** Paolo Sorrentino's two film, one hundred minute each piece on President Silvio Berlusconi comes to the United States in the form of a truncated, two and a half hour version combining both works into one. Without having seen the original, it is impossible to compare the two, but the American version of Loro has the feeling of incompleteness while simultaneously not having an entirely high amount of interesting elements in what is presented anyway. The film eventually gets to Toni Servillo's over the top version of Berlusconi, his big wide goofy smile reminiscent of his terrific work in The Great Beauty while also undergoing a bit of a transformation ala Il Divo, but to a kind of tiring effect here. First time is spent with Riccardo Scamarcio's Serio Morra, an ambitious young entrepreneur in the business of using his harem of escorts to bribe politicians, as he sets his sights on getting into dealings with Berlusconi by getting a summer home near the president's villa.  Meanwhile, Berlusconi is spending time in his haven though failing to capture the attention of his second wife Veronica Lario.  This is undoubtedly in Sorrentino's wheelhouse, both through subject matter and in style, and much of the first hour is devoted to extended depictions of youthful and wealthy decadence, with montages, slow motion, drug-induced fantasies, constant quick cutting, and a wide ensemble of nameless faces, naked body parts, and total orgiastic abandon. There is a nice contrast between Sergio's energy and the more meticulous pacing for Berlusconi, and it is a bit interesting to see Sorrentino crossing both styles as the separate strands merge. But these sequences go on for sometime without exactly getting anywhere, and it is difficult to imagine that Sorrentino had enough material to spread out across two entire films. There are some scattershot moments of interest parsed out across the film, such as a dialogue between Berlusconi and a twenty-year old he begins to lust after about the "patheticness" of their individual situations, but Sorrentino sets that mode aside for empty exercises in style too many times. His sense of energy and fascination with ambitious political chaos remains a centerpiece of his interests, but this time the parts do not come together to form as much of an engaging whole as in the past.  ​October 13th, 2019