Parthenope (15)

(Partially Subtitled)

Celeste Dalla Porta delivers a dynamic lead performance in Paolo Sorrentino’s beguiling and exquisite Italian drama.

We follow Parthenope (Dalla Porta), a woman of such great beauty that people stop and stare (Gary Oldman’s character says that her looks will open doors and start wars). She is from a well-off Neapolitan background who is haunted by a tragic incident in her past, when her two older brothers were both incestuously obsessed by her beauty.

Now she is destined to be an academic anthropologist, as her professor (Silvio Orlando) is profoundly impressed by her intellectual brilliance. He himself is a shy, divorced man living with his son, who is unseen and evidently has some kind of burdensome medical condition.

Along the way, a family tragedy sends her emotionally adrift, and as she’s ushered toward becoming a star of the silver screen, her conversations with older actresses illuminate the nature of her own desires — romantic, academic and otherwise. Each scene unfolds in dreamlike fashion despite being tethered to reality.

But it’s no mere coming-of-age story; rather, it’s a film about coming-to-oneself. It’s a moving artistic quest.