Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Stars: Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Milvia Marigliano, Rufin Doh Zeyenouin

An appealing air of autumnal melancholy hangs over writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s latest collaboration with actor Toni Servillo. Servillo is Mariano De Santis, the widowed President of Italy entering his ‘white semester’, the last six months of the Italian presidency. As his term draws to its end, De Santis, a staunch Catholic, is faced with two difficult decisions: whether or not he should sign into law a bill legalizing euthanasia, and if he should grant pardons to two people who murdered their partners – the film’s title translates as ‘The Pardon’. Among the trusted friends and colleagues De Santis takes counsel from is his daughter/assistant Dorotea (Ferzetti), head of the Armed forces and confidante Colonel Massimo Labaro (Cinque), his wonderfully blousy and irreverent old friend, artist Coco (Marigliano), and the cheerfully frank Pope (Zeyenouin).Sorrentino reins in the stylistic flourishes and prowling camerawork here in favour of a lowkey study of acceptance, regrets, forgiveness and, yes, grace. The typically excellent Toni Servillo is wry and quietly authoritative as a character pondering his legacy, even if the depiction of a decent and humble President feels at this point like wish-fulfilment. What may sound dour and elegiac is enlivened by a pounding techno soundtrack, and some unexpectedly random touches, such as when De Santis performs a gangster-style rap (the President’s guilty pleasure). The closing sequence is lovely.

David Willoughby

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