The Hand of God

Pao­lo Sor­renti­no loves breasts. This is strik­ing to any­one who has watched The Great Beau­ty, Youth or Loro, in which naked female flesh is as inte­gral to his set dec­o­ra­tion as whoosh­ing dol­ly shots are to his cin­e­mat­ic language.

Among oth­er things, The Hand of God is the sto­ry of the patient zero of boobs, which belong to Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) aunt to the Cha­la­met-esque pro­tag­o­nist, Fabi­et­to Schisa (Fil­ip­po Scot­ti). This Naples-set com­ing-of-age sto­ry is a por­trait of the artist Sor­renti­no as a young man, before and after a tragedy of worst-possible-nightmare-so-couldn’t‑really-happen pro­por­tions replaces bois­ter­ous fam­i­ly life with a lone­li­er path.

We’re intro­duced to the sprawl of the Schisa fam­i­ly through Patrizia one night as she waits in a long queue for the bus that’s nev­er com­ing while wear­ing a white strap­py dress – bra­less, nat­u­ral­ly. A limo creeps up beside her, con­tain­ing a strange old man who knows all about her and whisks her away to see ​‘the lit­tle monk’, a local urban leg­end who can, appar­ent­ly, make dreams come true.

As a result of this unex­pect­ed detour, Patrizia is late home and her hus­band flies off the han­dle. Cut to Fabi­et­to on a scoot­er with mum Maria (Tere­sa Sapo­nan­ge­lo) and dad Save­ria (Toni Servil­lo), roar­ing through the night, crack­ing jokes.

Theirs is a bub­ble of good vibes despite being en route to a scene of domes­tic vio­lence. Sapo­nan­ge­lo and Servil­lo cause mini light­ning storms of delight for every moment they’re on screen, even in scenes that are oth­er­wise hard to parse. Com­plet­ing the fam­i­ly is old­er broth­er Marchi­no (Mar­lon Jou­bert), an aspir­ing actor who los­es his ambi­tion after Felli­ni – whose pres­ence looms large off-screen – tells him he looks like a wait­er from Amarcuri.

Like the sport played by the icon hang­ing over its title, The Hand of God is a game of two halves. In the first, there is rarely a qui­et moment in vignettes that span Maria’s incor­ri­gi­ble appetite for pranks, broth­er­ly bond­ing, such as Marchi­no ask­ing Fabi­et­to to choose between hav­ing sex with Patrizia and Maradona being signed by Naples and – more weight­i­ly – the dis­cov­ery of an affair. An extend­ed fam­i­ly is drawn crass­ly, with Sor­renti­no oth­er­ing phys­i­cal dif­fer­ence, reach­ing for cheap jokes that are clear­ly inspired by Felli­ni, and yet Felli­ni him­self could not have car­ried them off in today’s world.

Still, the dynam­ic of the cen­tral four is a plea­sure incar­nate. Equal parts fun­ny and warm, each actor brings a spe­cif­ic dynamism that, when com­bined with the rest, crack­les with life and love. Time pass­es like a rip­pling sum­mer breeze in a mode that does not quite equal the cin­e­ma of Mia Hansen-Løve but is com­pa­ra­ble to the way she makes for­ward momen­tum feel like a del­i­cate plea­sure. Then comes the trans­for­ma­tive inci­dent. The film qui­etens down and in Fabietto’s words, ​“I don’t like real­i­ty any more.”

The Hand of God is the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal ori­gin sto­ry of a film­mak­er that exudes the warm inti­ma­cy that such per­son­al sto­ry­telling enables. It’s this inti­ma­cy that coax­es audi­ences in-the-know to be for­giv­ing over gauche streaks, such as Sorrentino’s view of female flesh as either sleek­ly porno­graph­ic or ridicu­lous­ly grotesque.