Look out, Challengers; another scorcher of a love triangle film is coming for your crown. Only instead of just two guys, this is about a woman who’s managed to capture the hearts and minds of an entire city’s worth of men. She and Zendaya should form some sort of Avengers-esque squad.
The new love triangle (or amorphous blob) film is called Pathenope, a Cannes premierer from The Hand Of God director Paolo Sorrentino. The film follows a young woman (Celeste Dalla Porta) “who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth,” according to the film’s logline. She was apparently “born in the sea” in Naples in 1950, although it’s unclear just from this first trailer how literal that statement is. The first shot does see her emerging from the waves Aphrodite-style and her name was taken from the siren who cast herself into the sea after her songs failed to sway Odysseus, so it seems like the line between myth and reality may be a bit thin in this vision of the sunny city.
The rest of the trailer is all sex and youth, youth and sex. Everywhere Parthenope walks, men stop in their tracks to take her in. If this movie took itself slightly less seriously, their eyes would be heart-shaped and popping out of their skulls. “Are you aware of the disruption your beauty causes?” a character played by Gary Oldman asks at one point, to which Pathenope responds, “I’m starting to suspect something.” In perhaps the biggest hint at the actual plot (not that “young love is good for nothing,” as the titular character is chastised for saying at one point), she later states, “I don’t know anything, but I like everything.” Maybe this one will be more comparable to Poor Things than Challengers after all.
In addition to Dalla Porta and Oldman, Parthenope also stars Stefania Sandrelli, Silvio Orlando, Luisa Ranieri, Isabella Ferrari, Silvia Degrandi, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Daniele Rienzo, Dario Aita, Marlon Joubert, Alfonso Santagata, Biagio Izzo, and Peppe Lanzetta. The film arrives to heat up the winter on February 7.
English (US) ·