For a filmmaker who has been the subject of gentle ribbing for the leisurely pace of his films (comedian Maurizio Crozza’s impression of the director is called Sonlentino, i.e., “I’m a little slow”), Paolo Sorrentino is dependably regular when it comes to unveiling new work. Since 2001, when he made his debut with One Man Up, he has released ten feature films (the eleventh, La grazia, is set to open the Venice Film Festival next week) and two television miniseries (The Young Pope and its sequel The New Pope).
He also finds time to attend events honoring him, such as the Zurich Film Festival in 2021 (where he joked about receiving an award for “the first half of my career”) and this year’s edition of Sarajevo, where he gave a masterclass and audiences had the chance to (re)discover his ten features, from the aforementioned One Man Up (the first of six collaborations with actor Toni Servillo, not including the upcoming La grazia) to 2023’s Parthenope, a very personal tribute to his home town of Naples (albeit a very different one from 2021’s The Hand of God, which was more openly autobiographical).
Whenever he graces such festivals with his warm presence, it’s always with a smile and an instinctive habit of self-deprecation. While his work is visually elegant and thematically ambitious to the point of being divisive, Sorrentino himself likes to downplay his achievements and has a good sense of humor: he’s a fan of Crozza’s parody, and acknowledged it in The New Pope; he’s also appeared as “himself” in both Boris (a show about the behind-the-scenes mayhem on the set of a mediocre TV series) and the Italian remake of the French hit Call My Agent!, as well as a skit where he fell asleep while watching his Oscar winner The Great Beauty (he refers to his snoring as “thinking hard”). He has also said he cast Filippo Scotti, who played his teenage alter ego in The Hand of God to award-winning effect, because he saw a specific quality in him: “nothing.”
Perhaps it’s because, for all of his international prestige which he finds a bit overwhelming (he has stated he’s not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Fellini, although he does find the comparison flattering), he’s not invincible, at least in Italy. Just ask local cinephiles who want to see Loro, his 2018 two-parter starring a riotous Servillo as Silvio Berlusconi (it was released as a single, shorter film internationally). Outside of its original run in cinemas, the movie is legally unavailable on the domestic market, because the non-theatrical rights were bought by Medusa – one of many divisions of Berlusconi’s vast media empire. The original two-part version is available only as a bonus feature on the French home release, with burned-in subtitles.
Now, as he prepares to share his latest work with the attendees of the Sala Grande in Venice (where he will be vying for the Golden Lion alongside the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Kathryn Bigelow and Park Chan-wook), one thing is certain: any negative criticism that comes his way, he will gladly take on the chin. If it’s particularly creative, he might even wear it as a cheeky badge of honor. Such was the case when the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles once called him the worst director of all time. Sorrentino took it as a compliment because “being the worst of all time is not easy.”
