Silvio et les autres

This film was definitely a wild one. It starts out very strong and I really liked the direction it went with early on. The momentum was great however it did start to dissipate. I think this is due to the overwhelming conflicts that were developing throughout the movie. The film has multiple layers that seem to overlap one another, and although interesting it was also confusing. There were some really epic scenes, and the overall vibe was very fun, so I did enjoy watching the film. That being said it still leaves you kind of scratching your head. It is hard to find the overall artistic direction or message behind the film.

The film is visually very beautiful. The scenery, sets and costumes are all visually striking. The story is rather thin though. It is more like a collage of hedonistic scenes with great style.

"Why can't I run the country like I run my business?!" asks the head of government. The current U.S President? No. It's a line attributed to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi (as played by the brilliant Toni Servillo). The association between the two leaders is intentionally unmistakable in Paolo Sorrentino's sprawling LORO. A bit of knowledge of Italian politics over the past couple of decades, and, Berlusconi in particular, is helpful here. Doubly so, because LORO was released overseas in two parts (the USA cut, 151 minutes, is about 50 minutes shorter than LORO I & II combined). It takes until almost the half-way point before Berlusconi is even mentioned directly (he's referred to as "lui, lui" (him, him) or, on occasion as "Silvio"). The movie is set mainly between the second and third terms of Berlusconi's rule circa 2006-2008. The first half of the movie revolves mainly around Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio; from JOHN WICK 2) a wannabe political insider who uses guile and the lure of women to get into Berlusconi's orbit. The central bait are modern Bacchanalian extravaganzas often referred to as 'Bunga Bunga Parties' where dozens of nubile women are recruited with the lure of drugs, sex and access to power. Even though Berlusconi himself doesn't appear, Servillo enters playing another character, Ennio, a confidant of the now out of power Prime Minister. Once Berlusconi himself enters, LORO becomes much stronger and more effective. Servillo is a superb actor and he imbues the movie with a strength and and a sense of purpose that brings focus to some of Sorrentino's flamboyant filmmaking. The Director's screenplay (co-written with Umberto Contarello) also becomes more cogent with Berlusconi's Machiavellian maneuvers getting constantly called out by his detractors, including his own wife Veronica (Elena Sofia Ricci; very good). LORO's current cut doesn't help an already episodic structure. As always, Sorrentino gets excellent mileage out of his cinematographer (Luca Bigazzi), and his music choices are compelling. The sheer amount of beautiful bodies on display here is eye-popping (even if it creates its own kind of hypocrisy -- the movie wants to critique the superficial, while often wallowing in it). There's a criminally under-seen Documentary, 2009's VIDEOCRACY where Director Erik Gandini traces how Berlusconi's media empire worked on dumbing down the Italian public with his flashy empty - and very sexed up - TV programming. LORO is strongest when it depicts that corruption of power over the public (in Italian, the title translates alternately as "them" and "gold"). Berlusconi metes out a few morsels to "them" while he collects the "gold". The best scene in the film outside those with Berlusconi comes at the very beginning with a sheep watching one of the leader's vacuous TV programs. Toni Servillo's brilliant performance as Berlusconi carries Sorrentino's uneven epic

No point in reiterating the praise already heaped on yet another brilliant Sorrentino entertainment except to emphasize what a mind-blowing tour de force Toni Servillo gives. He deserves an Oscar for Best Leading Actor (which he won't get). I'm saddened by the way reviewers have ignored the performances of the sheep. Silence of the Lambs, I guess. (I couldn't resist...sorry)

This international cut of Paolo Sorrentino's sumptuous-looking biopic of Italian media tycoon-turned-former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (1936-) runs 145 minutes, collated and edited from LORO I and II which were subsequently released in Italy and in toto clock in at 204 minutes, nearly one-hour length of footage is truncated (may it all be bikini-clad, pneumatic girls roistering in abandonment), so for cinematic purist, please refrain from this version.

Otherwise, let's dive into this sybaritic adventure which kick-starts with a wacky caveat: a kawaii lamb plumb drops dead seconds after it stumbles into the cavernous living room of Berlusconi's summer residence in Sardinia, the message seems clear - Agnus Dei aka. innocence cannot survive in that toxic environs.

It takes a good 40 minutes before Mr. Berlusconi's first official appearance, during which, Sergio Morra (Scamarcio), who runs an escort business in Taranto with his partner Tamara (Axen), aims to branch out by getting the former PM's attention - who is scheming to win the upcoming 2008 election - through the brokering of Kira (Smutniak), Silvio's current mistress, among others. Sergio arranges a rip-roaring party mainly consisted of barely-clad nubile girls, in a rented villa right in front of Berlusconi's. Will he rise to the bait? There is no question about that.

First time Mr. Berlusconi (Servillo) entering the scene, he is dressed like an Arabian woman, veiled and everything, holding a posy and trying to delight his estranged wife Veronica Lario (Ricci), but her dismissal hits like an icy knife, "Don't be a clown, Silvio." an inner voice exclaims. Indeed, Sorrentino's tack is to peel off this plutocrat's layered guises to reveal what he is made of, a salesman and a clown, two bullet points are shored up by a nocturnal cold call to prove he still gets his pitchman mojo and the irreparable dissolution of his 20-year-old marriage with Veronica, who despises him for his incapacity in statecraft and unrestrained debauchery. And there is more spiteful sideswipe, what is at the rainbow's end for an elderly man who literally has everything in his life? His long lost youth, of course, Sorrentino's senescent barbs levering at a septuagenarian through the mouth of a 20-year-old nubile girl Stella (Pagani), whom Silvio intends to bed in the course of another lavish quarry-hunting party organized by Sergio, is piercingly cruel, and even afterwards, he dredges up the spat and tries to erase its verity by a wisecrack, but a passing thought is: if Stella's grandfather indeed shares the same denture cleaner as his, she might not need to be at that pathetic party in the first place.

Contrasting the unconscionable razzle-dazzle (which Sorrentino has honed to the hilt with a dash of absurdity and saturated bling-bling pizzazz) with a muted emptiness - which seeps in in the wake of the calamitous 2009 L'Aquila earthquake occurring after Berlusconi's re-election, the way Sorrentino linking these two events together deviously implies that the calamity could be the Almighty's irate answer towards his ascendency, LORO (means "them" in English) finally junks it materialistic ballast/frippery as well as the subplot of Sergio's grasping pursuance, in lieu, Berlusconi's self-reflexion tangentially alludes to an inconvenient truth: a leader's characteristics reflect those of the multitude who chooses him, and now, they want Jesus back.

Toni Servillo is, to be expected, superbly eloquent and all-around (also playing Ennio Doris, a billionaire businessman and one of Berlusconi's closest associates) in embodying a well-known real-life character whose tics and elocution the mass (Italian audience in particular) is very au fait with, subtly buries his diligent imitation under a self-parodying conviviality (top-notch make-up achievement too), shouldn't one be alert if his Berlusconi comes off as rather sympathetic? Among a vast supporting characters, Scamarcio and Smutniak both turn heads, but it is Elena Sofia Ricci who plays off Servillo's motor-mouthed accusation and interrogation with a calm but smoldering despair that preciously retains her vestigial dignity.

LORO is largely what one can expect from Sorrentino's sardonic disposition and ostentatious modus operandi, even if your mileage may vary towards his controversial subject, at the very least, we must hand it to Sorrentino for laying an undue outpouring of his outrageous brainwaves with an enormous trowel.