“Grace” is a concept that has inspired volumes of theological literature, so it’s a brave director that takes it up as the theme of a movie. Paolo Sorrentino, one of the most accomplished filmmakers at work today, doesn’t lack the courage or artistry to weave a story around an abstraction, taking it into the most unlikely of settings: the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome, the official residence of the President of the Republic.
Politics is familiar territory for Sorrentino, but most of his protagonists have been thoroughly disreputable, from Giulio Andreotti in Il Divo (2008) to Silvio Berlusconi in Loro (2018). Both those scheming powerbrokers were played by Toni Servillo, a great actor, who has starred in most of Sorrentino’s films. In La Grazia, Servillo finally gets to play a political figure with a scrupulous regard for the law. It may say something about Italian politics that he’s a completely imaginary character.
Servillo’s Mariano di Santo is the President of Italy. Like the hero in Italo Svevo’s novel, Confessions of Zeno, he spends the entire story having one last cigarette, savouring this small act of rebellion against the tyranny of a health program that obliges him to eat quantities of quinoa.
A respected jurist who takes his time considering the pros and cons of any case, Mariano has exerted a steadying influence on the chaos of Italian democracy, having negotiated no fewer than six crises. He’s disturbed to learn that his nickname is “reinforced concrete”, but it’s a tribute to his integrity. Coming towards the end of his term of office, Mariano is hesitating to sign a controversial bill on euthanasia into law and pondering two appeals for pardons. The Italian word for an official pardon is “grazia”.