La Grazia

Can beauty bear meaning? The aesthetics of politics in Sorrentino's latest film, opening the Venice Film Festival 2025

Over the years, as Sorrentino’s films achieved a whole level of aestheticisation, some of the original fans of the filmmakers have lamented his growing distance from a deep political discourse: Il Divo portrayed Andreotti both as an aesthete and as the ruthless architect of some of the darkest pages of italian history from the ‘70s. The Family Friend and The Consequences of Love each do not mask much their attack onorganised criminality. Sorrentino after The Great Beauty seems to have lost this fierce aspect, and therefore his latest film La Grazia (Grace) seems to suffer of the preponderance of aesthetism that seems to overshadow content. But is this really the case, is a purely aesthetic piece of work unable to produce content?