Parthenope - 2024

 I don’t even know what to say… it’s not bad, it’s well done, but I don’t like it. There’s a thing like too  much realism, for me, and that’s the main thing here, and I don’t approve of the character and I generally find everything just… too much… everything, just too much. Watching the crude sexual act of two youngsters basically forced to do it, or looking at Parthenope’s crying face without her using any handkerchief…

But… I’m not from Napoli, and I’ve never been there. And maybe that’s the point, why I can’t feel this film, why everything feels to me like alien, why I could never connect. This film represents the many faces or souls of Napoli, fake or real, rich or poor, honest or camorra, etc.

Parthenope is the name of this girl, and we follow her life from the moment she’s born till her retirement, but mostly we follow her youth, of course. She’s lived a spoiled life, rich and beautiful, she had everything, and got used to have everything and everyone after her. Even her brother Raimondo. How could nobody say anything when it first started, why was it let go that far… it may be good to be fond of your brother or sister, but it’s not normal to be so ‘attached’ as to act as if you’re boyfriend and girlfriend… that’s not right and the adults should have acted when they were younger, when it started to not let it go so far that Raimondo could not imagine being with another woman and could not live with the idea of Parthenope with another man. Not acceptable.

Since her birth, both her brother Raimondo and their friend Sandrino are obsessed with her, and always keep around her. She’s young, beautiful and very spoiled. 

At school we only see her in her anthropology class, with professor Marotta who nobody likes but her, they kind of respect each other, she agrees to his deal of never judging the other.

They go to Capri, where Raimondo wants to court a rich heiress, and he does, and he gets her attention and could make his move… but he can’t even kiss her because she’s not Parthenope.

Parthenope wears very sexy dresses, for 1970 (I mean that they ‘just barely’ cover what they ought to cover), and acts completely free. She refuses other men’s advances, but is interested in talking with writer John Cheever (where we have conversations in English when everything else was in Italian). It doesn’t go further than interesting conversations, because he wants her to enjoy her youth, not waste time with his old self.

Sandrino is as always after her, dancing with her and touching her… when they just dance, Raimondo joins them and they dance all three together, but then when Sandrino brings her to having actual sex with him, Raimondo can’t cope with her with another man, and kills himself.

Parthenope’s mother openly tells her that it’s her fault, she’s sure it’s all her fault and will never forgive her. The time passing doesn’t help Parthenope cope with it, so she asks Professor Marotta to do her thesis on suicide, and she cries in front of him, almost silent but messy tears, with snot on her nose that she doesn’t clean for the whole scene. He doesn’t like the theme, and tells her to do it on ‘miracles’ instead, meaning miracles in their culture.

First Parthenope tries the acting path, because she had been given a business card from some agent saying she could be an actress. She meets an old diva who covers her face in black because she’s disfigured now or something, but wants her to kiss her. She sends her to another old actress, Greta Cool, who is a guest star at some even, but she basically insults Napoli and all its inhabitants. Parthenope likes her for it.

Parthenope then meets Criscuolo, a charming man in the camorra. He takes her to see the poor area of the city, with people she had never seen before, I wonder if she even know that people like that existed, that there was another kind of life other than the golden one she had always known.

Criscuolo gives some money to the poor people than leads her to a place where he needs to be: there’s going to be a big fusion between two camorra families, meaning they want a young man of one family to haev sex with a young woman of the other family and produce an heir of both families, but there’s lots of people there, all watching, to make sure that things go according to plan, so everyone watches these two naked people, she shows herself completely to excite him so that he can perform, and everyone watches until he finishes in her. Realist and crude and tough, I’d have rather watched the reactions, I don’t appreciate actually seeing it all.

We know that Parthenope had sex with Criscuolo, who knows what goes on in her head to do that… and then I guess she aborted, but they don’t dwell on it. I wonder what’s the meaning of that at all, maybe just to have her experience as many things as possible…

When Sandrino goes to her saying he loves her, she tells him it’s just a young love that will vanish with time, and that he caused Raimondo’s death, luring her into having sex when he knew that Raimondo was a fragile soul… she says these things looking and sounding serious, and I don’t see how she’s different from her mother here, putting the blame on someone else alone. 

Parthenope finishes her study lilterally with the upmost possible grade, (lode, plauso, bacio accademico…), and professor Marotta wants her as his assistant. 

Years go by and she’s offered to write about Saint Gennaro’s blood so she meets a cardinal that feels all the burden of having the miracle occur during his mass… which does not happen, the blood doesn’t change to fluid, but a woman starts screaming that her period is back and it’s the Saint’s miracle, staying theere with all the blood showing…  :-/

Parthenope has sex with the cardinal, after wearing the Saint’s jewels… 

Professor Marotta tells her that it’s time for him to retire, and tells her to apply for a position as a teacher, she would have to spend just a few years in Trento and then she could transfer back to Napoli. He convinces her and she accepts, so the professor finlly has her meet his son, finallys ure that she would understand and not judge. His son is a giant man-child, “made of water and salt”, “like the sea”.

We see nothing more of her until her retirement day, she’s been in Trento the rest of her life, teaching but never marrying. Now, she comes back to Napoli, after so long, and looks around and sees the people celebrating their football team’s championship victory, and smiles, she’s back home, she ran away for so long but now she feels part of Napoli again.