Oscar-winning Italian director Paolo
Sorrentino said Wednesday that his new biopic about Silvio
Berlusconi, Loro, is not a political work as he presented the
second part of the movie on Wednesday.
Like the first part that came out in April, Loro 2 is set for
a 500-screen release, on May 10.
In the film, "loro", which is Italian for "them", stands for
all the well-known Berlusconi tropes: beauty pageants, cocaine,
women in various states of undress, ambitious girls willing to
do anything to get ahead, former government ministers wheeling
and dealing, all of which and all of whom swirl around the man
at the centre of power, played by a masterly Toni Servillo.
"I was interested in the feelings behind a politician like
Berlusconi," Sorrentino told a news conference.
"It's not an attack on him, nor a defence of him.
"(Berlusconi's ex wife) Veronica (Lario) is herself a woman
who hides a series of questions.
"I wanted to investigate the feelings behind them.
"There are many thing on Loro, the fear of old age and death,
issues of mine for some time, almost a paranoia of mine, but the
spirit of the film was not to talk about historic events, but of
the feelings behind the events".
The Naples-born director, 47, is perhaps best-known for the
La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), which won the Oscar for
best foreign-language film in 2014.
He is also known for Il Divo, about Giulio Andreotti, and the
Consequences of Love, both starring Servillo.
Youth (2015) was Sorrentino's second English-language film,
and featured Michael Caine as a retired orchestra conductor.
It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film
Festival.
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