Loro (2018)

Loro is special because Paolo Sorrentino turns a real political era into a feverish, darkly comic spectacle—part nightclub opera, part moral x-ray—where the camera luxuriates in beauty even as it questions what that beauty is buying. Toni Servillo doesn’t just play Berlusconi; he embodies the seductive performance of power itself, charming, ridiculous, and quietly unsettling in the same breath, while the film’s glittering parties and hushed private rooms feel choreographed with hypnotic precision. It’s a satire with a pulse: funny, vulgar, and oddly melancholy, capturing how opportunists orbit a sun they can’t stop worshipping, and what it costs everyone to keep the music loud. Fair warning, the explicit sexuality and excess are constant and very much the point, so if you’re allergic to provocation you may bristle—but if you want audacious cinema that looks like a dream and stings like a truth, this is hard to resist.

Loro is Paolo Sorrentino trying to bottle the Berlusconi era as a glossy, corrupt fever dream—part satire, part lament for a country seduced by money, sex, and television. The problem is it often gets so hypnotized by the very spectacle it’s critiquing that the story can feel bloated, scattered, and emotionally distant, especially in this long director’s cut. If you want a sharp, tightly argued political drama with clear targets and momentum, this may test your patience and feel like a stylish shrug. But if you’re up for an operatic mood piece with striking images, dark humor, and Toni Servillo’s slippery charisma holding the center, there’s enough bite and craft to make the excess feel at least intentionally uncomfortable.