Paolo Sorrentino’s Truncated Version Of ‘Loro’ Is A Mess [TIFF Review]

Poorly structured, half-baked, and unrealized, writer/director Paolo Sorrentino‘s “Loro” is the worst kind of movie not because it is bad, but because it squanders immeasurable potential. A true-ish story about greed, ambition, sex, and politics, the film should blow the ceilings off theaters in Toronto, where it premiered this week at TIFF, yet it’s unlikely to do much except bore, confuse, and frustrate. Badly drawn characters push up hard against a script that doesn’t know how to balance one story against the others, resulting in a film that falls on its face as it tries to keep both feet planted on different sides of a narrative fence. And perhaps, to be fair, this is because “Loro” was originally conceived and released in Italy as two films that ran nearly 3.5 hours long combined. Presented in Toronto is the condensed, Foreign Film Oscar-friendlier 145 minute cut. It’s unclear if the extended version clears up many of its myriad issues, and given many of these problems are plotting and pacing, this concentrated edit may be tainted. Regardless, the condensed version is all that’s offered here.

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“Loro” opens by introducing its lead, Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio), who is greasing the wheels of an Italian political stooge to secure a lucrative government contract. When Sergio offers up a prostitute to close the deal, he hits upon an idea to get into the political-flesh pedaling business. This isn’t just idle daydreaming, either, as Sergio is hoping to hook the biggest “John” in Italy: President Silvio Berlusconi (Toni Servillo).

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A notorious skirt-chaser, Berlusconi is also a man that knows how to return a favor. Sergio is thus banking on making a romantic connection for the president that will lead to an “in” with the most powerful/corrupt man in the country. Calling in his hottest connections, and liquidating all his assets for drugs and booze, Sergio’s plan is to lure Berlusconi into an elaborately staged flesh trap where hard bodies and hedonism serve as the ripest kind of cheese.

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“Loro” doesn’t linger on this plot long, however, switching instead to an examination of Berlusconi’s personal and political life, where he comes off as a surprisingly human (albeit narcissistic) character. The audience is brought up to speed on the president’s romantic drama with his wife, Veronica (Elena Sofia Ricci), along with the particulars of his planned political comeback. It’s almost an hour before the film shifts back to touch on Sergio’s plotline, and by that point, it’s hard to care.

Overall, this is an odd film, and not just because it can’t manage more than one character’s story at a time (again, perhaps the longer version solves these problems). For example, in the real world, when normal human beings speak, they usually don’t open with salvos like, “You’ll never be able to fuck someone like me.” Seriously: the people in this movie talk the same way superheroes pose after sticking an especially good landing, and despite a similar affinity to tights, this doesn’t play well in “Loro.” This would be bad enough if the movie only had wretched dialogue, but as mentioned earlier, the entire structure and presentation of the narrative is likewise ill-conceived and poorly executed.

Pacing-wise, the film makes a number of odd choices for something clocking in at 150 minutes. Why, for example, “Loro” decides to halt everything to give a detailed 4^th-wall break explanation of MDMA, along with its chemical composition and effects, is never clear. It is the very definition of telling instead of showing, and it is the rule rather than the exception, here.

Indeed, this is the “White Album” of movies: every idea, be it good, bad, fully-formed, or partially-cooked, is just thrown at the wall and hung up for all to see. Various C- and D-plots with tenuous connections to either the A- or B-plots appear only to vanish again, and some characters are thoroughly introduced only to be more or less abandoned later.

And while writer/director Paolo Sorrentino should be credited with shooting a gorgeous looking movie full of color, stunning landscapes, and kindly-shot flesh, this is about all it has going for it. Scamarcio and Servillo do admirable work in scenes that probably looked great on the page, but the performances are left to just kind of dangle unconnected to anything larger or more profound. A fresh edit might be able to patch a few of the problems in this festival cut of Sorrentino’s newest offering, but for now, anybody going into this one should expect more “loco” than “Loro.” [D]

Check out all our coverage from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival here.