Loro
Hell is Other people
Film. An orgasmic portrait of Berlusconi and a satire of Italy by Paolo Sorrentino, Loro already seems to tell a vanished world. Explanation.
By Franck Lebraly
Some will say that it is the best film of the director of The Great Beauty, one can recognize a perfect mastery of the staging and parties, sort of giant clips filled with the greatest fantasies of the Italian males. The frame and sound, indissociable elements in the work of Sorrentino, make it a real gem filmic.
”Released last April in Italy, under the title Loro (the others), it was presented in 2 parts and lasted 5 hours in total
The first 30 minutes are an ode to Italian cinema, a message to the world cinema, the motive being a little free, such a fable that would be entitled “sheep and air conditioning”. The tone is set. Between real facts and sublimated facts, we are in 2009, shortly before the earthquake of Aquila… A small mac of Puglia played by Riccardo Scamarcio dreams of meeting “il presidente” and organizes a big party with the most beautiful trumps of the “boot”. The meeting is done but falls like a tiramisu, and despite the downtime that seems essential, we look at his watch. A little like the people who would wait for their messiah, in vain.
When the actor Toni Servillo appears, in Silvio, he totally monopolizes the screen and we would almost forget the 30 stunners revolving around him, projecting the man like an iconic star contrary to the very political Caimano (Nanni Moretti 2006).
Because Silvio is Italy in the most flamboyant and most questionable. Genius all-rounder, modern nabob, the “cavaliere” made fantasize his country without too much shame. As part of the transalpine culture of satire, the film reminds us how much Italian people have always liked to make fun of their politicians, Sorrentino first, since he is already author of Il Divo on Andreotti. But it seems that the page is turned for good. The film was released there last April, a few weeks after the elections that saw the populist victory. Under the title Loro (the others), it appeared in 2 parts and lasted 5 hours in total (because originally planned for television). He arrives in France reassembled and compiled into a film of 2:30, and it is perhaps the main defect that can be found. Unless, more deeply, Italian politics does not make us laugh so much.
