Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
"Loro", in two parts, is a period movie that chronicles, as a fiction story, events likely happened in Italy (or even made up) between 2006 and 2010. "Loro" wants to suggest in portraits and glimps, through a composite constellation of characters, a moment in history, now definitively ended, which can be described in a very summary picture of the events as amoral, decadent but extraordinarily alive. Additionally, "Loro" wishes to tell the story of some Italians, fresh and ancient people at the same time: souls from a modern imaginary Purgatory who, moved by heterogeneous intents like ambition, admiration, affection, curiosity, personal interests, establish to try and orbit around the walking Paradise that is the man named Silvio Berlusconi.
Loro 2 continues Sorrentino's audacious portrait of Berlusconi's Italy with sumptuous visual excess and a bravura Toni Servillo performance that anchors the film's satirical energy. Sorrentino's cinematography is characteristically operatic — wide angles, languid tracking shots, and a decadent Mediterranean palette that make the moral rot feel seductive. Servillo's physical and vocal transformation is genuinely exceptional. The plot, however, remains episodic and impressionistic rather than dramatically propulsive, a deliberate choice that sacrifices narrative coherence for atmosphere. While Sorrentino's style is unmistakable, the film's approach echoes The Great Beauty and Youth enough to feel like familiar Sorrentino territory rather than a singular new statement. The ending offers a melancholic, deflating portrait of a man stripped of power but not of self-delusion — effective but not quite transcendent.