Review: A master sensualist returns with an alluring star and not much else in ‘Parthenope’

A softer Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty”) is still a fertile imagemaker. That means a willing viewer can coast through much of the Italian writer-director’s new film, “Parthenope,” on an enigmatic bliss-out of Neapolitan beauty (both people and places) and languid charm. The rest of the time, though, things are pretty but unfocused, like dreams that are half-remembered, not tangible enough to incur real meaning.

The movie is built on the drifting life of a smart, stunningly beautiful and unfulfilled woman. But “Parthenope” shouldn’t have to strain as hard as it does — it plays like a fragrance ad. That qualifies as a disappointment for a filmmaker whose sensualist impulses are God-tier. Sometimes, his eccentric, loose storytelling style can dampen the impact of the rarefied emotions he’s after. And with his overlong “Parthenope,” the mild suppressing of most of his Fellini-esque impulses in favor of a sexy Michelangelo Antonioni aura yields only scattershot results.

Birthed in the sea of Naples, named for the mythic siren but first made real to us as an 18-year-old bikini goddess emerging from the shimmering water, Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta) is, despite her appearance, at odds with the power of her beauty. Carrying an air of winking disruption — the gardener gets a robe-dropping free show — and also a bemused circumspection, she swans around under the summer sun like a bright, shiny, cigarette-smoking seductress, causing rowing teams to stop and stare (so much less lethal than what real sirens did). She also enjoys a playfully flirtatious (and in one case, eye-opening) relationship with the attractive young men around her. And Naples offers plenty of those.

But Parthenope also knows how to gently, and with a teasing smile, push back at anyone’s preconceived notions about who she is, and what she is or isn’t thinking. A devoted reader and ambitious student, she revels in the depressive stories of John Cheever, who even makes a guest appearance as a tourist-ing acquaintance (played by Gary Oldman), giving gin-soaked pontifications on youth’s transience. At her university, meanwhile, Parthenope impresses her jaded anthropology professor (Silvio Orlando) with the openness of her curiosity.

The academic career she craves, however, doesn’t stop her from exploring what’s out there, and Sorrentino’s menu of experiences for her covers a lot of thematic ground: a mysterious encounter with a disfigured acting guru, a night picnic with a wealthy admirer who hovers in a helicopter, an affair with a folk hero who connects her to the city’s poor masses, a personal tragedy that reminds her of life’s fragility. In perhaps the most outrageous detour, she visits a carnally philosophical bishop (Peppe Lanzetta). Even the preserved blood of Naples’ patron saint San Gennaro is susceptible to her charms. Her transfixing allure seems to draw every oddity and incident, but as the years pass, there’s also a fixity to her resolve.

That’s also the problem with Sorrentino’s approach. Is he truly interested in the depths of his creation, or just the surface pleasures of a scenario that makes a few points here and there about beauty’s eternal appeal? All while his admittedly gorgeous leading lady plays a cryptic symbol?

One admirable reality to this unfortunately superficial adventure is how steady Dalla Porta is. She meets Sorrentino’s demanding direction with a game nonchalance — so much staring at the lens! It’s no mere cover-model performance inside the high gloss of Daria d’Antonia’s cinematography. And she’s asking the questions the movie wants asked. But without a character that we feel connected to, even Parthenope’s great beauty, meant to suggest Naples itself, qualifies as an overburdened resource.