Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Hand of God’ on Netflix, Paolo Sorrentino’s Gorgeous, Audacious Semi-autobigraphical Nostalgia-Memoir

Now streaming on Netflix, The Hand of God is director Paolo Sorrentino’s nostalgic autobiographical drama about a teenage not-a-boy/not-a-man coming of age in mid-1980s Naples, and whose life was saved by Diego Maradona, the greatest footballer/soccer player of all time. Well, sort of. Indirectly, anyway. Hence the title, a reference to Maradona’s famous/infamous 1986 World Cup goal, scored not with his head or foot, but his fist. Sorrentino is the visionary storyteller behind nutty Sean Penn vehicle This Must Be the Place and underrated stunner Youth; his foray into deeply personal subject matter could be poignant, or indulgent, or both.

THE HAND OF GOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: First impression: The Naples Sorrentino initially presents here brings to mind New Orleans – a lovely seaside city with a slightly haunted old-world energy. Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) is the first character we meet, possibly because she’s destined to be the young protagonist’s muse, and an object of his sexual awakening. She stands on the street, where she’s picked up by an older gentleman who knows her even though she doesn’t know him. He takes her in an antique car to a dusty, vacant mansion whose centerpiece is a gigantic crashed chandelier; she meets someone/thing known as “the little monk” and is groped by the old man, who says, as of now, she’s no longer incapable of bearing children. She returns home to her husband, who accuses her of prostituting herself and physically attacks her.

Patrizia is the sister of Fabietto Schisa’s (Filippo Scotti) mother. Fabietto zooms his scooter down the nighttime streets with his parents, Saviero (Toni Servillo) and Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), on the back, clinging tightly. They arrive to comfort and calm Patrizia, whose recent erratic behavior puts her mental health in question; Fabietto can’t pry his eyes off his voluptuous aunt’s exposed breast. Fabietto will remember these moments – the scooter ride, his aunt’s beauty and despair – later in the film, when they take on greater meaning, because he doesn’t know it yet, but his adulthood begins right there.

Sorrentino fills in the details of young Fabietto’s life: The Schisa family lives in a middle-class Napolitano apartment. Fabietto and his father love the Napoli soccer team, and can only dream that someday Diego Maradona will play for them. Saviero is a warm gent who works in a metropolitan office, and may not be entirely faithful in his marriage. Maria is an upbeat, whip-smart wondermom who performs an impressive juggling act with oranges, and has a penchant for pulling terrible pranks on friends and family. Fabietto shares a bedroom with his older brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert), an aspiring actor; Marchino is the one who breaks the ice about their Aunt Patrizia’s beauty. Their teenage sister Daniela is perpetually in the bathroom and so rarely seen, putting the name of the actress playing her inside parentheses seems pointless. Their upstairs neighbor is a widow of a “famous gynecologist,” and is known only as the Baronessa (Betti Padrozzi); she gives off some witchy vibes, not in a bad way, but a mysterious way.

We watch as the Schisa family enjoys languid outdoor meals with aunts, uncles, cousins and a foulmouthed matriarch. They boat into the gulf and swim and emerge from the water to find Patrizia sunbathing wearing nary a stitch; she calls Fabietto over to bring her a towel. Fabietto tags along with Marchino as he auditions to be one of 4,000 extras in a Fellini film; later, Fabietto watches in awe as a director known as Capuano (Ciro Capano) stages an extravagant stunt in the streets for his own movie. Asked by his mother what he’d like to do when he’s done with school, Fabietto says maybe philosophy, which is absolutely one angle of the filmmaking profession. He and his father rejoice when impossible rumors become reality as Maradona joins Napoli – a divine acquisition, surely. Daniela is still in the bathroom. Did you know Sorrentino became an orphan at age 16? It’s true. Absolutely, sadly true.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Alfonso Cuaron explored similar autobiographical bittersweet nostalgia with Roma, albeit through the eyes of a protagonist other than himself.

Performance Worth Watching: Scotti is a fine emotional anchor for the film, showing shades of Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, and Ranieri finds the poignantly anguished heart of poor tortured Aunt Patrizia. But Saponangelo is the film’s vitality, a breezy, yet substantial presence, infusing Maria with gaiety that supersedes all of life’s troubles – and therefore underscores the story’s tragedy.

Memorable Dialogue: Fabietto and his friend Armando (Biagio Manna), during an all-night bonding session:

Fabietto: You’re nuts.

Armando: I’m not nuts. I’m young. Ain’t you?

Sex and Skin: Plenty of Euro-nudity funneled through the POV of a budding teen male. Also, an unsexy sex scene.

Our Take: Sorrentino’s style could be described as cinematic braggadocio – his confidence as a visual storyteller is always on display, and his compositions and themes exhibit a kind of controlled fearlessness. It’s important to notice how The Hand of God is framed more with pain and love – for family, for the city of Naples – than with ego. That truth overshadows the easy spearpoint criticisms of the film: That it’s Fellini worship, that it’s yet another exultation to the Power of Cinema (such things definitely peaked with The Shape of Water and may have bottomed out with Mank, which was good, but for crimony’s sake, why bother?).

The film is more subtle than most movies about a life in movies, about the birth of a filmmaker. That’s just a component of Sorrentino’s narrative, which uses sports, food, sex, laughter, violence and tragedy as textural components of one boy’s Napolitano life, which is evoked vividly, with comedy, sadness and playful bursts of surrealism. Fabietto befriends a cigarette smuggler, rents Once Upon a Time in America on VHS, contends with a bat in the Baronessa’s apartment, watches as the richest man in the world randomly walks by, watches his school crush perform in the theatre, hugs his brother, yells to his sister through the bathroom door, allows the light of the movie screen to reflect off his face, argues with Capuano, deals with family secrets as they spill out, loses his virginity and wanders the streets of Naples, where he remembers that blissful moment with his parents clinging to the back of his scooter. Eventually, everyone jumps into the sea, where they swim and they get wet, and maybe Fabietto isn’t quite ready to do the same.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Hand of God is an audacious, shameless, vivacious, gorgeous film that draws us into its world, which Sorrentino has filled with life in all its messy wonders. It’s a portrait of a filmmaker exhibiting a controlled hand while telling a story he has no control over. That’s the struggle. That’s the truth. That’s art.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream The Hand of God on Netflix