— Opening film, Venice International Film Festival, 2025

A widowed Italian president faces moral crises over euthanasia legislation and pardoning killers while grappling with his late wife's infidelity during his final months in office.

La Grazia feels like Paolo Sorrentino putting his own restraint to the test — swapping out his signature opulence for a stern rationality that, at times, verges on self-erasure. The Quirinal Palace appears not as a center of power, but as a museum of silent contemplation, where Toni Servillo’s president embodies a paradox: a man crushed by duty, hollowed by hesitation, and stirred only by nostalgia. In this claustrophobic setting, the grand themes of law, faith, and grace turn into mirrors — reflecting his own paralysis.

Sorrentino’s trademark musical flourishes — so essential in The Great Beauty — emerge here awkwardly, like interruptions from a director unsure of which cinematic voice to use. In that way, he becomes a twin to his protagonist. But it’s exactly this wavering — this unresolved tension — that gives the film its quiet emotional force.

— Anna Datsiuk, festival curator