Pussy, sex, naked bodies, breasts and nipples, the greed to obtain a lot of money as if by divine grace from a horny and naive politician, or, dream of dreams, from him. Silvio Berlusconi's name is never mentioned in this film: he, the president, doctor. But there's a whole microcosm of attractive women and girls, more or less servile lackeys, political subjects, and climbers who revolve around his almost mythological figure.

From the title and the first abundant hour of the film, the author brings this "fauna" to the forefront, as Jep would say, those who have no dignity to lose and who hope for just a glance, even for a few seconds, from the unattainable president. The moral depravity of The Great Beauty then seems almost harmless, naive, compared to how far we have gone in the world of Sergio Morra, Kira, and all the others. Sex, drugs, opportunism, a frozen soul suppressed. It's a society that lacks any value grip, but (unlike the salons frequented by Gambardella) it doesn't even have the mental capacity and cultural strength to realize it. Not cultured and decadent men, but little worms, ants scrambling in every way to reach him.

Topics often explored in recent years of Italian cinema and television, but never with Sorrentino's disarming clarity, who eliminates any moralistic diaphragm and delves deeply into the matters, letting the characters define themselves. The directorial gaze manages to stay in miraculous balance between the tragic and the grotesque, burlesque. In the sense that the stories of these humble crawlers are not dismissed because they are immoral: they are narrated with precision and insight, without ever posing as judges who condemn. They are real men and women, with feelings, families, stories, even suffering paths. Their shameless opportunism does not make them subject to summary judgments.

Yet, their tragicomic condition inevitably emerges. Despite the meticulous care of the narration, despite the absence of prejudice. After about an hour of the film moving through the underworld, slowly the director's eye withdraws and portrays this rabble of whores and pimps from a distance in their extreme misery while partying in front of Silvio's villa in Sardinia, hoping to get noticed. A tangle of lustful, beautiful, shiny, and polished flesh, but by that point horrible and vile in the eyes of the spectator who has precisely measured their miseries.

And then he appears. And it's disorienting to see such an overexposed and omnipresent character in his film version. It seems impossible to say something interesting about a man so scrutinized by newspapers and television. Yet Sorrentino finds a way, halfway between the rubber mask with a thirty-two-tooth smile and the lost little soul in his extreme boredom. In his hypertrophic ego, like an octopus with innumerable tentacles, what emerges is a man walking at a different pace compared to others, even his wife Veronica; ironic, wise, brilliant, ruthless when needed, genuinely false, in love but horny and libertine, clownish and hieratic, completely alone yet constantly surrounded by courtiers. For him, truth doesn't really matter, only the ability to be convincing in what he says.

In the first part, the character is only introduced, but what can already be appreciated is the fact that it is the people trying to approach him, it is the women wanting to take him to bed, rather than the opposite. His figure is too big, too bright for these people, and so even he in a sense becomes a victim. Of course, he is a man who acts and performs more or less good actions, but I believe Sorrentino wanted to highlight this aspect. The film talks about "them" much more than about "him."

There are several bizarre elements, in the director's best tradition. There is God, the man no one knows whom, and a gallery of characters wonderfully poised between farce and extreme, pure tragedy seriousness. It is the tragedy of those who have everything and have nothing, like Silvio himself. A palace, jewels, yachts, delicious food. And in the end, you still find yourself with nothing, annihilated, and you can only try to drown this bitterness in lust, in the uncontrollable pleasures of the flesh. I believe this will be very visible in the second part, but this first part sets excellent premises.

And the women have never been so shameless, blackmailers, whores. They are women who know they are and do it deliberately, solely to profit from it. From the beautiful and strict Albanian to the almost naive student, there is not even a doubt about the morality of their actions. It's obvious to identify references to scandals in recent months in the cinematic world. Sorrentino goes heavy, putting under the spotlight drooling men, horny thirteen-year-olds, and unscrupulous women, Venuses with rotten hearts.

7/10

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