Metacritic-Rezensionen

Loro itself becomes somewhat Berlusconian, though associating that pseudo-fascist slimeball with anything this visually resplendent should be some sort of crime.

Servillo—who previously embodied another former Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, in Sorrentino’s Il Divo—never fails to deliver a memorably offbeat take on an outsize figure. Loro loses a bit of momentum once Berlusconi finally becomes its central figure, but it also gains some much-needed complexity.

Loro feels like the work of a more mature artist. Sorrentino knows exactly who his Berlusconi is, and, with the help of Servillo — who delivers a characteristically impressive performance — manages to make the former Prime Minister’s total lack of introspection seem ironically revealing. Ecco Silvio: pathetic, alone, indestructible.

There’s a sloppiness and incoherence in the storytelling.

It’s a flawed, undigested film that, like Sorrentino’s movie Youth, is knowingly indulgent of old men’s foibles. But there is one great scene in which Berlusconi, just to prove he’s still got it, cold-calls a woman out of the blue posing as a realtor and tries to sell her an apartment off-plan.

Since Servillo is too great an actor to settle for caricature, he undercuts his monstrous role with pangs of sympathy: the carousing has a late-life wistfulness, the breakdown of his marriage to his apparently still-beloved Veronica (Elena Sofia Ricci) rings with genuine regret.

Loro has a ton of style and effective performances across the board.

Like most of Paolo Sorrentino’s films, Loro is closer to a stylistic orgy than an existential rumination on Italy’s heritage.

In some ways Berlusconi, a media mogul and cruise-ship crooner in earlier phases of his career, a creature of appetite and excess, is Sorrentino’s ideal subject. But the overlap in their sensibilities turns Loro into a blurry, distracted, sentimental portrait.

Ultimately, Sorrentino’s sympathies lie with Berlusconi because – in their vacuity and their need to impress – they have something in common.