Parthenope

"An exquisite treatise on cinematic beauty"

"Mostly the film is an experience you can drift through as the heroine drifts through life, enchanted and sceptical at once."

"The film’s succession of symbolically loaded vignettes is less meaningful than intended."

"At least the hypnotizing Dalla Porta brings a strength and sadness to the role that underscores the film's most compelling argument."

"Parthenope can’t overcome the very prosaic problem of a main character who isn’t really much of a character at all."

"Della Porta certainly works overtime to show you that Parthenope is indeed more than just a pretty face."

"By the end, you can’t help but see Sorrentino as an earnest poet, but also one whose pretty-sounding, lushly filmed musings are for the sake of hearing his own voice."

"Without a character that we feel connected to, even Parthenope’s great beauty, meant to suggest Naples itself, qualifies as an overburdened resource."

"Just another of Sorrentino’s many impressionistic vignettes about Naples that don’t add up to much."

"A two-dimensional examination of gender, tethered to a protagonist with no real depth."