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Actor Gary Oldman will be joining the cast of Paolo Sorrentino’s upcoming Italian-language film about his native city of Naples. The movie is yet untitled, and no details are yet available about Oldman’s role. The veteran actor had most recently appeared as British intelligence officer Jackson Lamb in Apple TV+’s Slow Horses and as Harry Truman in Oppenheimer.
The film is Sorrentino’s tenth feature. It focuses on a woman named Partenope, a septuagenarian “who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth,” said Sorrentino in a recent article in Variety. In Greek mythology, Partenope is a siren who drowned herself in the sea after failing to charm Odysseus (Ulysses) on his journey. Her body washed up on the site where the city of Naples was built.
In his comment, Sorrentino added with a flourish: “Her long life embodies the full repertoire of human existence: youth’s lightheartedness and its demise, classical beauty and its inexorable permutations, pointless and impossible loves, stale flirtations and dizzying passion, night-time kisses on Capri, flashes of joy and persistent suffering, real and invented fathers, endings and new beginnings.”
In addition to Oldman, the Italian actors Nello Mascia and Biagio Izzo will also be joining other cast members whose names had already been announced: Luisa Ranieri, Silvio Orlando, Stefania Sandrelli, Isabella Ferrari, Peppe Lanzetta, Alfonso Santagata,Lorenzo Gleijeses, Silvia Degrandi, and Celeste Dalla Porta.
The film is being shot on location between Naples and the Isle of Capri. It is being produced by several Italian and French entities: The Apartment Pictures (a Fremantle company), and by Saint Laurent, Numero 10, and Pathé. Douglas Urbanski serves as executive producer.
Sorrentino’s first film, L’uomo in Più (“One Man Up”), was also set in Naples. It featured Toni Servillo in the role of an aging singer. Sorrentino’s 2013 film, The Great Beauty, won an Oscar for its depiction of the city of Rome in a period of cultural malaise. He is also acclaimed for the films The Young Pope and The New Pope, and for his 2021 Netflix offering, The Hand of God, which won two awards at the Venice Film Festival.
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