Inside Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino lie two wolves, each representing a near equal amount of his quarter-century spanning filmography. On one side lies a man fascinated by the complexities of love and beauty, often expressed through hedonistic behavior. His most acclaimed and awarded work, The Great Beauty, follows a man who fills the dark emptiness of his heart with the debauchery of the Roman nightlife. Excess is often the name of the game, with the visuals matching the grandiosity of the experience. On the other side is an examination of the church and state. Supreme powers are held by flawed men who lie within the halls of the Vatican and the Quirinal Palace. Loro and Il Divo center themselves on famous prime ministers, the former on Silvio Berlusconi, the latter on Giulio Andreotti.

The closest these two sides came to merging was in the HBO miniseries The Young Pope, where a brash American cardinal played by Jude Law is unexpectedly elected as one of the youngest popes in Catholic history. He’s disruptive to the old ways, his actions spurred by the love he never received throughout his orphaned childhood. 2025 is also a year where everything comes together, although still in a mutually exclusive fashion. Released in February in the United States after playing internationally in 2024 was Parthenope, led by the most beautiful woman in the world, as she discovers desire and determination in Naples. Coming now in December, after stops at the Venice, Telluride, and New York Film Festival, is La Grazia, a sobering drama about a sunsetting Italian president dealing with a complex executive decision and the sadness he endures after his wife’s passing.

The opening is cold and austere, listing out the contents of Article 87 of the Italian Constitution against a plain blue sky. Within the president lies the ultimate legal powers, instilled so that he may be a righteous symbol for the Italian people (something that America has lost sight of). After commendably serving as a lawyer and judge for many years, Mariano De Santis (Tony Servillo) has become the man for the job. He’s a stately person, self-described as boring and clinical. He’s not perfect, as he indulges in cigarettes as he stands atop the palace late at night, overlooking the millions of Romans that he has sworn to serve.

Just as a leader needs a strong mind, he also needs a strong heart. Mariano’s has been crushed by the death of his wife ever since he took office. He leads out of a sense of duty, but can no longer find the gratification in the work. He falls asleep every time he prays, and is starting to have doubts about all things both spiritual and literal. This is the eighth occasion that Servillo has appeared in a Sorrentino film, a collaboration that has been wonderfully fruitful for the pair. Servillo displays a wealth of sadness with each look, his soul conflicted as he has lost purpose while occupying the most important job in the country.

To sign or not to sign. That is the central question for Mariano, as his daughter and assistant, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), presents him with a bill to legalize euthanasia and a trio of options for pardons. She is aggravated by his stubbornness, his nickname within the halls being “reinforced concrete.”  As always, Sorrentino finds immense beauty in these proceedings. The frames are cool and calculated, like pristine marble. The soundtrack is elegant, with the prominent inclusion of “Le Bimbe Piangono” by Guè Pequeno included for an extra bit of spicy levity. 

“Who owns our days?” is a question that is brought up on numerous occasions throughout the film. Is it the best version of ourselves, or the version racked with doubt and guilt? The road to perfection is one marked by pain and heartache. Yet, it’s what makes us stronger, winning the battles in a never-ending war. La Grazia takes a roundabout way to illustrate that theme, mixing in Sorrentino’s in-the-moment, flashy style with a sneaky amount of depth.