LORO: Silvio Berlusconi Biopic Is Bunga-Bunga-Brilliant

If there was any director born with the sole purpose of depicting one of Silvio Berlusconi’s Bunga Bunga parties, it would be Paolo Sorrentino. The Italian filmmaker’s biopic of the country’s controversial former Prime Minister is a scathing, satirical piece of work – but, naturally, when you have a director often referred to as Fellini’s heir at the helm, it’s one that equally indulges on the sex-fuelled extravagances of the politician and everybody in his orbit.

Loro feels like the closing part of an unofficial trilogy looking at the scandals of Italy’s rich and powerful; following Il Divo and The Great Beauty, Sorrentino is clearly obsessed with this excess, and clearly believes the best way to critique it is to depict it at its most ridiculous. It was surely only a matter of time before he gave the media tycoon’s third term as Italian Prime Minister the same treatment.

Over-Indulgent, and all the better for it

In Italy, the film was released as two separate chapters, but for this “international cut”, Sorrentino shaved an hour from the running time, overseeing and approving the final edit. Usually, this spells disaster, but the original two-parter left many critics baffled; Thierry Frémaux, the director of the Cannes film festival, even refused to program the biopic at the festival where Sorrentino had been a regular due to confusion as to what the project was. You wouldn’t be able to guess those behind-the-scenes troubles when watching this version, as cutting the unruly project down to a concise 140 minute running time has sharpened the satirical focus.

The film undeniably gets caught up in the sheer excess of those in power, but to complain of over-indulgence in a film so scathing towards a man who prefers to frequent sex parties than fulfil his political duties, would be missing the point – not just of this film, but of Sorrentino’s filmography as a whole. It’s like an Oliver Stone film filtered through the orgiastic lens of Baz Luhrmann, or a European counterpart to Adam McKay’s political biopics but with a sharpened sense of clarity.

Berlusconi isn’t introduced until roughly 40 minutes into the film, the most delayed reveal of a film’s central figure since Ang Lee’s Hulk. Before then, we’re introduced to sleazy businessman Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio) who bribes local politicians with prostitutes in order for favourable policies towards his companies. But he dreams of the bigger picture, and moves to Rome, using his girlfriend Tamara (Euridice Axen) to become acquainted with leading politicians in Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia, then entering a period in opposition. He dreams of being noticed by the self-made man at the top, even hiring a villa in Sardinia opposite the politician’s own, filling it with young women and MDMA in the hope an elderly man Playboy Italy inexplicably named “the sexiest politician alive” will join in the fun.

But Berlusconi (Toni Servillo) has other things on his mind. His long suffering wife Veronica (Elena Sofia Ricci) no longer returns his affections, and he remains crushed by his recent electoral defeat by a mere 25,000 votes. He still has overwhelming influence; he controls six of Italy’s major TV networks and is regularly visited by footballers who he persuades to sign up for AC Milan. But without power, everything doesn’t seem like enough – until his old friend Ennio Doris (also played by Servillo) gives him the master plan of convincing six senators from the ruling party to defect, thus granting him power. He soon meets Sergio, and suddenly realises that he has more enthusiasm for the empty excesses of his life than any conventional tasks that the elected leader of a country needs to carry out.

In recent years, numerous performances have been Oscar nominated in large part due to the sheer physical transformation the makeup team aided the actor with – think Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, or Christian Bale as Dick Cheney. The plaudits for those performances were largely thanks to the transformative work of the behind-the-scenes stylists. In real life, Silvio Berlusconi increasingly looks like the subject of numerous botched makeup jobs; when the first image of him campaigning for the country’s 2018 elections emerged, many international observers commented on how he had somehow transformed into Kryten, the robot from BBC sitcom Red Dwarf. It’s one of the few cases where an excessive makeup job not only isn’t distracting (Servillo disappears into this role in a way Oldman and Bale wished they would), but a necessary requirement for bringing the divisive politician to life.

More than just a physical transformation

But Servillo doesn’t just use the physical attributes bestowed upon him as an excuse to indulge in a lazy compilation of his character’s famous mannerisms. As befitting a politician known for his larger than life qualities, he brings a self-aware theatricality to the role, with Sorrentino using every chance he can get to show this master manipulator at work. He’s happy to pause the narrative for five minutes to show the former PM imitating an estate agent, so skilful at knowing the hopes and dreams of his fellow countrymen and using them to his advantage. Unlike many of the skits in, say, Vice, each feels relevant to the international audience’s understanding of how this proto-Trump could repeatedly weasel his way into power, as well as winking at his other oft-parodied characteristics. 

There are two musical numbers sung by Servillo, nodding to the fact Berlusconi would release an album of love songs mere weeks after losing Prime Ministerial power for the third time – and a gymnasium dance sequence mockingly uses Meno male che Silvio c’è (Thank Goodness for Silvio), a song dedicated to the politician released as part of a widely maligned campaign video. Berlusconi wasn’t a dictator, but he had the far reaching influence a dictator would be proud of, and the use of this annoyingly catchy earworm lays that bare far clearer than any sex party or meeting with the great and powerful could.

After watching Loro, you get the sense that Sorrentino would be the only director trusted to make the inevitable Trump biopic; for a film that bludgeons the audience with unsubtle excess, its approach to Berlusconi’s lack of political correctness (“I love the gays, in fact, I’m 25% gay. Only that 25% is lesbian”) is somewhat toned down from the reality, where he would eventually give numerous speeches praising America’s “tanned” President, Barack Obama. But he still refrains from making the politician a tragic figure; outside of the excess, his baffled response to citizens of a small town following an earthquake shows he has no right to be in power. 

The director doesn’t shy away from the scandal – anybody hoping to see one of the famous bunga bunga parties will not leave disappointed. But he knows that because of how familiar these stories are from the headlines, even a decade removed, that it’s wiser to chip away at the artifice and show the emptiness within. That he does this after an opening 40 minutes indulging in the hyper-sexualised TV that Berlusconi’s media empire promotes, numbing the minds of viewers with sex appeal to distract from his political failings (a method ripped straight out of Nineteen Eighty Four), suggests that Sorrentino is happy to have his cake and eat it. It’s lucky for him that the cake tastes good.

Loro: Conclusion

Loro is a fantastically entertaining biopic of Berlusconi, perfectly articulating why he managed to endear himself to the electorate while showing the numerous reasons why he was never suited for power in the first place. For a director obsessed with the decadence of Italy’s most powerful, Loro feels like the film Paolo Sorrentino was born to make.

What are your thoughts on Loro?

Loro is released in the UK on April 19. All international release dates are here.