Paolo Sorrentino: Between Engagement and savoir faire.

The attribution of a political identity to a group of films is a process which will depend, on the one hand, on certain characteristics of the texts themselves, and on the other, on the various processes that take place during their cultural reception. For this reason, my analysis in this article is based on the intersection of certain textual characteristics of Sorrentino’s films with their social reception and commentary, and I include particular emphasis on film criticism and the Italian press. In the second section, I read the style of the director’s staging of space as the most recognisable element of his filmmaking (his ‘trade mark’). In the third section, I trace out the ways in which the Neapolitan director defines the main characters of his films, and specifically the political implications of this characterization. In the fourth, I reconsider the political identity of Sorrentino’s cinema in light of the notion of ‘postmodern impegno’