Stefania Sandrelli

I Knew Her Well

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Close up of Adriana

A beautiful young woman glides through life bewitching the men around her in Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well (Io la conoscevo bene). Stefania Sandrelli, a knockout in real life who won a beauty contest and went to Rome to become a film star, plays Adriana Astarelli (similarly alliterative names surely no coincidence), a beauty following the same route but falling into every trap along the way. Pietrangeli’s camera first finds Adriana lying topless on her front in the sun on the beach, glides up her legs and over her buttocks before following Adriana back to the beauty salon where she is meant to be working. By the time she gets back there … Read more

Parthenope

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Parthenope listens as someone whispers in her ear

Parthenope is Paolo Sorrentino vamping, riffing on Paolo Sorrentino. A fabulously good looking film full of defeated old guys and spectacularly hot women, it nods as ever to La Dolce Vita, has a nice cameo for a famous actor, and the grotesques keep coming as if it had somehow accessed Fellini’s dreams. What is it about though? Sorrentino has said it’s not about the Greek version of the Parthenope myth – the siren who lured men onto the rocks. Or the Roman version – the beauty loved by the centaur Vesuvius, who was turned into a volcano by jealous Jupiter while Parthenope herself became a city, the future Naples. And yet it is … Read more