Parthenope
A24 | Release Date: February 7, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
17
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Irish TimesTara BradyApr 30, 2025
These picaresque and picturesque adventures fail to coalesce into a movie. But it’s impossible to argue with Daria D’Antonio’s ravishing cinematography and an unexpectedly moving coda featuring Stefania Sandrelli as an older Parthenope. Read full review
50
Original-CinChris KnightFeb 20, 2025
As written by Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino (who also directs), there is precious little going on beneath that alabaster exterior. One can only have characters ask each other “What are you thinking?” so many times before it feels as though the question is being begged. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Anne T. DonahueFeb 20, 2025
The film is, true to Sorrentino’s style, breathtakingly shot. It is a vibrant, arresting love letter to Naples complemented by the choices of costume artistic director Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. Every shot is intentional, every close-up serves a purpose. The problem, however, is that the purpose is as surface deep as the characters Parthenope consistently reckons with. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzFeb 18, 2025
There is a hazy, gauzy quality to all of this, which keeps things just out of reach. Certainly, it looks like a lot of fun to be young, beautiful and rich in Naples. But Parthenope is also out of reach, almost an idea as much as a character. What that idea is I’m not quite certain. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 13, 2025
Parthenope is sensual and visually exquisite. It might not dig way too deep into its message, but it does get it across by the end. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleFeb 11, 2025
The movie is built on the drifting life of a smart, stunningly beautiful and unfulfilled woman. But “Parthenope” shouldn’t have to strain as hard as it does — it plays like a fragrance ad. That qualifies as a disappointment for a filmmaker whose sensualist impulses are God-tier. Read full review
55
The Daily BeastNick SchagerFeb 7, 2025
As sumptuous and vapid as a commercial for Dior or Chanel’s latest fragrance. Read full review
40
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 7, 2025
Parthenope wants to be a feminine epic. It’s really just an update of those Bardot arthouse skin flicks, Italian style. But it can take solace in easily being an early contender for the horniest movie of the year. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyFeb 7, 2025
There are, in trademark Sorrentino style, moments of Catholic-Church-baiting blasphemy and playful surrealism (a gigantic bloated toddler makes an appearance), but for all of its eccentricities and ruminations, Parthenope can’t overcome the very prosaic problem of a main character who isn’t really much of a character at all. Read full review
60
The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaFeb 6, 2025
Parthenope, like Sorrentino’s previous films, is an intentionally garish display of sex and luxury that is both irritating and oddly seductive. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineSeth KatzFeb 3, 2025
The film’s succession of symbolically loaded vignettes is less meaningful than intended. Read full review
60
Time OutAnna SmithMay 22, 2024
Sorrentino is clearly trying to move with the times – even if he’s still most comfortable in the decades he’s depicting here on screen. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 22, 2024
Of course, Sorrentino’s way with a camera will always be intriguing and exhilarating to some degree. Yet Parthenope simply floats complacently across the screen, like a two-hour ad for some impossibly expensive cologne. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 21, 2024
We’ve had two-hours-plus to leaf through this empty life, but Sorrentino makes it amount to almost nothing, except his usual love letter to Napoli, and an added ode to side-boob. Read full review
50
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 21, 2024
There is no faulting the radiant performance of Celeste Dalla Porta in her feature debut. It’s the objectification of her character that’s the issue – plus Sorrentino’s trick, here indulged even more flagrantly than in The Great Beauty, of privileging flashy audio-visual tableaux over narrative coherence. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 21, 2024
There’s much to appreciate in Parthenope, Paolo Sorrentino’s second consecutive bittersweet paean to his home city of Naples. At least for a while, before the too-muchness of it takes hold and the character at the center stops being intriguing and just becomes a siren with an air of mystery but too little evidence of all that’s supposedly going on behind it. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 21, 2024
Preoccupied with the idea that a lack of self-knowledge is what makes people mysterious, Parthenope denies its namesake any real interiority, convinced that depriving us the chance to appreciate her perspective might somehow enhance her rhetorical value. Read full review
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