PARTHENOPE (2024)

What does it mean to live a beautiful life? Or even just a real one? Paolo Sorrentino returns to Naples—and to the cinema of memory—with Parthenope, a dreamlike portrait of a woman and a city, both suspended between myth and modernity. Join us as we unpack this lush, melancholic reverie about identity, desire, and the ungraspable nature of time.

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PARTHENOPE (2024)
Dir. by Paolo Sorrentino
Available to rent on YouTube, Amazon Prime, and AppleTV

**“She is not a symbol, she is not an idea, she is not a metaphor.” Parthenope, named after the siren of legend, is a woman of flesh and feeling—but also the center of a film that treats existence like a sun-drenched opera. From her youth in postwar Naples to encounters with art, politics, love, and loss, her life unfolds with the elusive poetry that has become Sorrentino’s signature. The city glows with beauty, decadence, and history—but under it all, there's always something aching.
Like in *The Great Beauty*, Sorrentino is after the sublime. But here, the search feels softer, more intimate. Less about spectacle, more about remembrance. Is Parthenope a person, a city, or a state of mind? Can we ever really separate those things?

With visual grandeur and a musical soul, Parthenope invites us to meditate on what it means to be seen, to drift, to remember—and to belong.

*As always, this is a movie discussion group—we invite you to watch the film on your own ahead of time, and come ready to explore together.*