Review: Netflix's The Hand of God is solipsistic in a way only the Golden Globes could love - The Globe and Mail

Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino.

Starring Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo and Luisa Raneri.

The Hand of God is the sort of lusty Italian neorealist dramedy they don’t make anymore – maybe with good reason.

Having proved his gifts for grandiose cinematic sensuality in The Great Beauty, Youth and HBO’s The Young Pope, Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino makes the inevitable jump to Netflix for his 10th feature film, which won the Grand Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Filippo Scotti as Fabrietto, Toni Servillo as Saverio, Teresa Saponangelo as Maria and Marlon Joubert as Marchino in The Hand of God.Gianni Fiorito/Courtesy of Netflix.

His warm, compassionate mother Maria (Teresa Saponagelo), also likes to pull mean-spirited pranks on her relatives and neighbours, and his father Saverio (Sorrentino mainstay Toni Servillo), is a lackadaisical communist with a long-standing mistress, which is eating Maria alive.

The Hand of God wants to know why people shaped by trauma become filmmakers, and Fabrietto’s pain mirrors Sorrentino’s own loss of his parents at a young age.

Later in the film, young Fabrietto has a chance encounter with Italian director Antonio Capuano (here played by Ciro Capano), who gave Sorrentino his first screenwriting credit in real life.

Fabrietto confesses to him that he wants to make movies now, saying: “I want an imaginary life, just like the one I had before.” Cinema will always be escapism to Sorrentino, which explains his maximalist style.