Paulo Sorrentino’s latest film, Parthenope (pronounced parth-en-o-pay), got its UK release yesterday. So with much excitement – I am a big fan of Sorrentino’s work – I set off to the Harrogate Everyman. There were only three of us in the cinema, although I guess that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise at twelve noon.

The film is extremely complex. If you like your plots to be straight-forward, or indeed understandable, then this is probably not for you. Like most Sorrentino films, both the cinematography and the soundscape are rich, stylish and beautiful, a real feast for the senses.

So, the plot. Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta) is a stunningly beautiful woman from a well-off Neapolitan background, so beautiful in fact that when she enters a room, all heads turn. Her older brother is obsessed by her, almost to the point of incest; their childhood friend shares this obsession. However, regardless of the effect she has on everyone around her, she is rather cold and emotionally detached, unable to take pleasure from her exceptional beauty. Following a tragic incident, she refocuses on an academic career, achieving a high-level degree in anthropology at the University of Naples. Her professor (Silvio Orlando) is profoundly impressed by her intellectual brilliance, although we never really see anything which justifies that. As well as academe, she flirts with writing, acting and the church, however wherever she goes she sees disappointment and corruption: her favourite writer is John Cheever (Gary Oldman) who is filled with self-loathing; she meets two great actresses (Isabella Ferrari and Luisa Ranieri) who are both ridiculously arrogant and delusional; and the ‘miracle-working’ Bishop of San Gennaro (Peppe Lanzetta) is immoral and repulsive in equal measure. With Parthenope having opted for the academic life, the film then skips ahead some 40 years to her retirement. And that, basically, is the plot, or at least an outline of it.

However, this is not a film about story; it is perhaps best described as a visual poem, full of symbolism and metaphor. To begin with Parthenope symbolises Naples itself. In fact, Parthenope was an ancient Greek settlement, the oldest Greek settlement on mainland Italy, which formed the basis for modern Naples. Parthenope was also one of the sirens in Greek mythology, hence Parthenope is a personification of beauty and, by extension, a metaphor for youth.

And there we have Sorrentino’s preoccupations: Naples (his home city), youth and beauty.

The film is certainly a love letter to Naples – I think it would be hard to watch it without longing to be there, hence, I suppose: ‘see Naples and die’. Whilst watching, it occurred to me that it was so visually stunning that at some stage I could rewatch the film without the subtitles, just to focus more on the pictures, allowing the Italian words to wash over me along with the wonderful music. However this is Naples warts-n-all: we also witness ugliness and corruption.

But it is much deeper than that: it is also a contemplation of the nature of youth and old age, playing with the idea that if not exactly wasted on the young, then at least the true beauty of youth cannot be fully understood until life itself is almost extinct. She is asked by a man some fifty years her senior: “if I was forty years younger, would you marry me?” She responds: “that is the wrong question: the point is, if I was forty years older, would you still want to marry me?” This is basically Hegelian philosophy: youth being a transitional stage, a search for identity and understanding, a period of uncertainty before reaching the certainty which comes with age.

As I said at the beginning, Parthenope is a complex film, working on many layers and not easily understood, certainly not from a single viewing. I found giving the film a star rating extremely difficult. I plumped for three stars, although I toyed with both two and four. And if you think that is a cop-out, wait until you read my recommendation:

If you like Sorrentino’s work then this is a must see; if you like a good story, simply told, then maybe don’t bother!