The Italian Paolo Sorrentino returns to the world of politics, this time through a fictional head of state: Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo), a veteran jurist who faces his final months in office with an euthanasia law and two pardons on the table. If the filmmaker portrayed former leader Giulio Andreotti through a bubbling pop artifact in Il divo, he has now opted for a more reflective approach and a surprisingly restrained visual narrative that alludes to the prudence (or indecision?) of his new protagonist. The camera movements that marked La gran bellesa are reserved to express moments of particular unease for the character. The exception is a scene that is more histrionic than meaningful (ridiculing the inflexible ceremoniousness of power), but which could also seem like an inadequate echo of previous works... or an authorial toll like Hitchcock's cameos.

One of the main objectives of the 82nd Venice Film Festival is to establish itself as a privileged showcase for the best Italian cinema. Accustomed to seeing the country's great filmmakers, such as Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher, present their works at Cannes, this year the veteran Italian festival is betting on local talent, starting with Paolo Sorrentino. Despite being a regular presence at the French event, the director of The great beauty has opened this year's Mostra with The grace, a film that broadens Sorrentino's approach to the universe of politics, a territory he already satirized in Il divo (2008) and in Silvio (and the others) (2018), two parody portraits of Giulio Andreotti and Silvio Berlusconi. At the press conference for the presentation of The grace In Venice, Sorrentino has expressed his interest in making a political film "at a historical moment in which ethics seems optional, elusive, opaque, or invoked only for instrumental reasons."

I can't be objective when talking about Rome. I love this city. Many films have brought us closer to the eternal city, from Fellini to Pasolini, from Rossellini to Wylder. But the tribute that Paolo Sorrentino paid to it in 2013 with The Great Beauty I find it difficult to surpass. I don't intend to be objective when talking about that work either. A film curiously made by a Neapolitan who has lived in Rome for many years. Perhaps this way he could know the city so well, but also maintain some emotional distance to portray it as he did.