Venice<\/a> Film Festival last week and was greeted with mostly rave reviews, including from The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cBy the director\u2019s standards, this is a sober and distinctly mature film, centered by the unwavering composure of Servillo\u2019s [character] De Santis,\u201d wrote THR\u2019s chief critic, David Rooney. \u201cBut it\u2019s not without the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino\u2019s best work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHeaping praise on Servillo\u2019s performance, Rooney summed up his take, writing: \u201cThe alchemical ideal in actor-director collaborations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tA political drama of the most introspective kind, La Grazia (which means \u201cGrace\u201d in Italian), follows Servillo as President Mariano De Santis, a widowed jurist in his final months in office at the peak of Italian political power. Confronted with soul-crushing dilemmas \u2014 the proposed legalization of euthanasia in Catholic Italy and the pardoning of two convicted killers \u2014 De Santis wrestles with moral uncertainty while haunted by memories of his late wife\u2019s infidelity. Anchored by solemn rituals and Sorrentino\u2019s signature surreal elegance, the film in many ways operates as a counterpoint to the director\u2019s best-known work, The Great Beauty, in its meditations on the Italian national character and personal longing and regret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian director Paolo Sorrentino\u2019s La Grazia,\u00a0widely hailed as a return to form for the 2013 Oscar winner, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,718,2839,56,54,55,10989,10307],"class_list":["post-109952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice","tag-venice-film-festival-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}