This review was originally published on August 27, 2025. La Grazia is now in select theaters.

Despite his current reputation as a creator of aggressively aestheticized films, Paolo Sorrentino was once a director of uncommon subtlety. Understated early works such as One Man Up and the masterful Consequences of Love focus on people struggling with static lives and longing to be elsewhere. Later efforts don’t necessarily abandon these themes, but, especially in the wake of his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty , the director gained notoriety as a Felliniesque showman making lush, busy films in which the grotesque and the beautiful jut up against each other. And even as his work has become more personal over the past few years (his two most recent films, the autobiographical Hand of God

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