“Beauty is like war — it opens doors,” says the middle-aged American writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman) to Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta), a statuesque brunette from Naples whom he meets at a resort. It’s southern Italy, 1973, and Cheever (Oldman in a small but memorably melancholic part) strikes up a friendship with her early on in the film. “Parthenope”, a characteristically decadent drama by the director Paolo Sorrentino, is about all the doors opened by Parthenope’s beauty. At first — when she’s seen primarily in a bikini, lounging by crystalline ocean waters — this means capturing the hearts of male suitors, like her namesake siren from Greek mythology.
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