Parthenope Star Celeste Dalla Porta on Smoking, Watching and Exploding

When we meet Celeste Dalla Porta as the titular character in Parthenope, it is 1968 and Parthenope is 18, emerging from the water, extolling the pleasures of a cigarette after a swim in the ocean. It's a moment of carefree indulgence that is typical of a Paolo Sorrentino film, and hints at the coming exploration of youth, beauty and time.

Parthenope is an early name of Naples, the Italian city that is Sorrentino's hometown, a place the film explores through the life of our heroine. It is stunningly beautiful, but some outsiders underestimate it as provincial, corrupted or disposable.

Dalla Porta believes that her character's smoking is a reflection of the 1960s and '70s, before cancer warnings were everywhere. But there may also be an "autobiographical" element, she notes: Both she and Sorrentino are smokers, though the 27-year-old actress notes that she's cutting back.

"At a symbolic level, I feel that the gesture of smoking is very fascinating," she tells MovieMaker through an Italian translator, Lilia Pino Blouin.

"There is a self-destruction component to it," she adds. "There's poison that you're putting into your body. And people that have suffered a lot may feel an attraction to that. They may recognize themselves in this self-destructive gesture."

In Greek mythology. Parthenope was a siren who cast herself into the sea and drowned when her songs failed to entice Odysseus. The film takes inspiration from the myth, but with soaring departures. It has a central tragedy, yes, but Parthenope would never kill herself over a man. She spends most of the film, in fact, brushing them off with elegant charm.

She aspires to be an anthropologist, a keen observer of human behavior — not to be studied herself, despite other characters' frequent comments on her beauty, echoed by critics in nearly every review of Parthenope.

"Are you aware of the disruption your beauty causes?" asks Gary Oldman's character in the film's breezily intoxicating trailer.

"I'm starting to suspect something," she replies.

Dalla Porta was a relative unknown in the U.S. prior to the film, which also features lively, fresh performances by Gary Oldman and Italian actors Dario Aita, and Peppe Lanzetta. She first crossed paths with Sorrentino, the auteur of 2009's Il Divo and 2013's Oscar winning The Great Beauty, when she played a small role in his 2021 film The Hand of God, an Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film.

We talked with Celeste Dalla Porta about becoming a star, the male gaze, and the importance of Italian film icon Stefania Sandrelli, who makes a pivotal appearance in Parthenope.

Tim Molloy: Your character is an observer, which can be mistaken for being passive or being inactive. How do you play an active, very conscious observer?

Celeste Dalla Porta: This is a character that definitely does observe everything all around her, and the way that she uses to observe can come off as passive — but it is by no mean passive. It's very emotional, and she allows the people that she comes in contact with to leave a mark, and at the same time, she leaves a mark on the people around her. So what truly matters is this ability to provide space and to open herself up.

Tim Molloy: Every review of this movie that I've read has talked about this being a star-is-born performance. Did it feel that way when you were making it? Does it feel that now has your life dramatically changed?

Celeste Dalla Porta: Well, when I was making the movie, I tried to focus on it as much as possible, and to not think about what my future would be like. I just wanted to be in the present. I just wanted to enjoy each and every day on set, and I did not have any projections about the future.

But naturally, since it was a Paolo Sorrentino movie, and it was a project that was so deeply focused around a female character, the lead character, I knew that there would be a lot of talk about it.

Of course, not so much about me, as such, but about the actress that would play the lead role. And right now, I am going through a time where I'm sort of exploding. There's so much change in my life all around me because of the movie, and I'm in the heart of the promotion, and therefore I'm trying, like I was describing earlier, to be fully present, day by day. Naturally, it's very engaging and emotional as a process. And my life has changed, but in a very positive way.

Parthenope Star Celeste Dalla Porta on Breaking Shells

Tim Molloy: Regarding the symbolism of smoking, do you think the character is self-destructive?

Celeste Dalla Porta: I don't believe she's self destructive. ... She is looking for happiness and freedom. And regarding the gesture of smoking, maybe we can see that as a symbol of some degree of unhappiness, but maybe that's not true either. Maybe she's simply a character who smokes.

And on the other hand, when she's faced with the possibility of something that can be self destructive, I feel that she tries to work on it and to have that evolve — starting from a moment of unhappiness, to lead to a greater understanding of what life is and what human behaviors are like. And indeed, she's an anthropologist.

Tim Molloy: I don't agree with this criticism, but I've noticed that some critics feel that this film is an exercise in the male gaze by Paolo Sorrentino. Did you feel that way?

Celeste Dalla Porta: I don't know to what extent what I think matters in terms of these criticisms on the movie, because at the end of the day, I am the interpreter of this character, and I feel that anyone can think or see into it whatever they want, but I can only focus on the work that I did, that we did together.

It can be a provocation, if you will, on how difficult or how challenging it is to free oneself from a male projection — how challenging it is for a beautiful woman, especially in those days, a beautiful woman who is pursuing her own freedom, how challenging it can be for her to break free from the shells that men created around her.

Therefore, I don't think that there is a political discourse about it or around it in terms of the roles of men and women. I think it's simply a story about the life of a woman and the experiences that she goes through.

Tim Molloy: Can you talk about what you did, watched and listened to for research?

Celeste Dalla Porta: Paulo Sorrentino gave me a lot of advice, and in particular he mentioned two books that I should read: One is entitled Il mare non bagna Napoli, which literally translates as The Sea Does Not Get Naples Wet [a 1953 book by Anna Maria Ortese], and another is entitled Ferite a Morte, which literally translates as Wounded to Death [a 2013 book by by Serena Dandini]. They are two books that talk about the city of Naples, and in particular the city of Naples in the '60s and '70s, or even sooner than that, even an earlier age.

Their books helped me to immerse myself in the atmosphere and the mood of the Sorrentino imagination... what he had in mind for this film and in terms of the smells, of the sounds, and of the different feelings and melancholic mood that this city can evoke in people. So there were many factors that he wanted for me to fully grasp, because I am not Neopolitan. So these books did help me find that sort of mood.

Also, I listened to a lot of music on my own from the '70s, not necessarily Italian music. That was a time of great musical discovery and explosions. And also, Neapolitan music, of course.

And then I watched a few movies. Paulo recommended to me that I should draw inspiration from Natalie Portman's character in Closer. She had a degree of melancholy that he thought could be important to me, and a degree of mystery as well.

And also he mentioned Claudia Cardinale, and Io la conoscevo bene [translated as I Knew Her Well, from 1965]. The main character is Stefania Sandrelli when she was very young. She's very similar to Parthenope.

Parthenope is now in theaters from A24.

Main image: Celeste Dalla Porta in Parthenope. Photo by Gianni Fiorito. Courtesy of A24.