Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, widely hailed as a return to form for the 2013 Oscar winner, has locked down its theatrical release date in North American cinemas. Mubi will open La Grazia in theaters on Dec. 5, teeing up a potential Oscars campaign for its inimitable Italian star, Toni Servillo.
La Grazia opened the 82nd Venice Film Festival last week and was greeted with mostly rave reviews, including from The Hollywood Reporter.
“By the director’s standards, this is a sober and distinctly mature film, centered by the unwavering composure of Servillo’s [character] De Santis,” wrote THR’s chief critic, David Rooney. “But it’s not without the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino’s best work.”
Heaping praise on Servillo’s performance, Rooney summed up his take, writing: “The alchemical ideal in actor-director collaborations.”
A political drama of the most introspective kind, La Grazia (which means “Grace” in Italian), follows Servillo as President Mariano De Santis, a widowed jurist in his final months in office at the peak of Italian political power. Confronted with soul-crushing dilemmas — the proposed legalization of euthanasia in Catholic Italy and the pardoning of two convicted killers — De Santis wrestles with moral uncertainty while haunted by memories of his late wife’s infidelity. Anchored by solemn rituals and Sorrentino’s signature surreal elegance, the film in many ways operates as a counterpoint to the director’s best-known work, The Great Beauty, in its meditations on the Italian national character and personal longing and regret.
