It’s easy to dismiss Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope, as some critics have, reducing it to a sumptuous perfume ad à la Tom Ford. The same could be said about Celeste Dalla Porta’s eponymous character, who often finds herself being pigeonholed into certain archetypes due to her striking looks, which are only rivaled by the film’s sweeping shots of the Neapolitan jagged cliffsides that abut the surrounding cerulean sea.

In this personal, intimate three-decade-spanning epic — Sorrentino’s follow-up to 2021’s lauded The Hand of God — a young Parthenope comes of age amid the backdrop of family turmoil and tragedy, pursuing a life of education and wonder. A cinematic exploration of the limitations of and privileges afforded by beauty and youth, Parthenope cascades through ‘60s and ‘70s Italy as a loose orange scarf dances in the wind, digging into criminal underbellies, the papacy and the rise and fall of divadom.