Loro (2018)

Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino | 151 minutes | drama, biography | Actors: Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kasia Smutniak, Euridice Axen, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Roberto De Francesco, Dario Cantarelli, Anna Bonaiuto, Giovanni Esposito, Ugo Pagliai, Ricky Memphis, Duccio Camerini, Yann Gael, Alice Pagani Tillette, Iaia Forte, Michela Cescon, Roberto Herlitzka, Fabio Concato

In the opening scene of ‘Loro’ (2019), a lamb walks into the Sardinian country house of media mogul and former prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi. Apparently no one is there, but a game show is shown on the television. The lamb stares mesmerized at the silent image while the air conditioning suddenly starts to blow loudly and cools the room to zero. The lamb cannot cope with the rapid temperature change and falls dead. A Lynchian ominous scene that we can read as a parable in which the Italian people allow themselves to be fooled by a megalomaniac politician and media monopolist, only to succumb to a rotten political and cultural climate.

The Berlusconi phenomenon depicted. How is it that a man whose business is so intertwined with corruption and deceit, vulgar entertainment and empty promises, can persuade so many millions of Italians to vote for him?

‘Loro’ seems to explain it this way: Berlusconi – beautifully played by Toni Servillo – is a sympathetic and exceptionally skilled salesman who knows exactly how to please the voter, read the customer, with nice words and attentions. That is the nature of the beast Berlusconi. There’s no nefarious intent behind it, but rather a superficial mind, for all the cunning, that likes to gloat over kitsch amusements, such as the miniature volcano in his garden that he can erupt with a remote control.

And just as Berlusconi remains mysteriously out of the picture in that first scene, he also shines in his absence in the forty minutes after that. The title of the film refers to the people around Berlusconi. The opportunists and the adoring smooth-jackers, who want to penetrate his circles, gape at him and hope to get a piece of the pie.

Director Paolo Sorrentino chooses to portray this hedonistic world in an excess of cinematographic fetishism. For example, the first half of the film, in which pimp Sergio Morra tries to get into the view of the big man with a caravan of girls, is reminiscent of ‘Spring Breakers’ (2012). Narrative elements strung together through video clip-like scenes of partying naked bodies. ‘Loro’ goes even further with a surreal rain of ecstasy pills, and a professor suddenly appearing on the screen who gives a treatise on the effect of MDMA. It is of course meant ironically, a nod to Berlusconi’s sexist entertainment, but then the second part of the film sticks better, in which Berlusconi finally appears on the scene himself.

Here, Sorrentino and Servillo deliver an entertaining and clever character study, culminating in a scene in which Berlusconi calls a random number from the phone book late at night and plays the lady he gets on the line and entices into buying a fictional luxury apartment. . Moments later, ‘Loro’ summarizes the Berlusconi phenomenon nicely: ‘They think that everything is always complicated, when it is so simple.’