Review: A master sensualist returns with an alluring star and not much else in ‘Parthenope’
A softer Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty”) is still a fertile imagemaker. That means a willing viewer can coast through much of the Italian writer-director’s new film, “Parthenope,” on an enigmatic bliss-out of Neapolitan beauty (both people and places) and languid charm. The rest of the time, though, things are pretty but unfocused, like dreams that are half-remembered, not tangible enough to incur real meaning.