ParthenopeMovies like Parthenope
- Key Features:
- Naples, Italy, Beauty, Love, Desire, Coming-of-age, Italian cinema, Melancholy, Romance
- Tone:
- poetic, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Art house cinema lovers, Italian film enthusiasts, Romantics
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Passion → Reflection
Parthenope

Parthenope, born in the sea near Naples in 1950, is beautiful, enigmatic, and intelligent. She is shamelessly courted by many. However, beauty comes at a cost.
Parthenope
In a Naples suspended between magic and superstition, madness and rationality, a mystery envelops the existence of Adriana, overwhelmed by a sudden love and a violent crime.

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

The film presents the tale of Agnese Ascalone, daughter of prominent miner Vincenzo Ascalone, and takes place in a small town in Sicily. Agnese is seduced by her sister Matilde's fiancé, and has a tryst with him for which she confesses and tries to repent, only to be discovered by her mother and father.

During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.

A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.

A summer fling born under the Sicilian sun quickly develops into a heartbreaking love story that forces a boy and girl to grow up too quickly.

Maria, Pinuccia, Lia, Katia and Antonella are five sisters who live in an apartment in Palermo. They make a living by renting doves for ceremonies. On a normal day at the beach, tragedy strucks.

Geremia, an aging tailor/money lender, is a repulsive, mean, stingy man who lives alone in his shabby house with his scornful, bedridden mother. He has a morbid, obsessive relationship with money and he uses it to insinuate himself into other people's affairs, pretending to be the "family friend". One day he is asked by a man to lend him money for the wedding of Rosalba, his daughter. Geremia falls in love at first sight with the bewitching creature and and soon indulges in a "beauty and the beast" relationship...

We are with Pasolini during the last hours of his life, as he talks with his beloved family and friends, writes, gives a brutally honest interview, shares a meal with Ninetto Davoli, and cruises for the roughest rough trade in his gun-metal gray Alfa Romeo. Over the course of the action, Pasolini’s life and his art are constantly refracted and intermingled to the point where they become one.

Salvatore and Romolo are two young and poor young men that are neighbours and friends. They live with their parents in Piazza Navona, Rome. They are poor but handsome, and both fall in love with Giovanna.

Seventeen-year-old Ginia leaves the countryside in search of a new life in Turin. Restless and seeking adventure, Ginia soon finds it in the beautiful, enigmatic Amelia, whose sensuality and confidence embolden her to begin modeling for the bohemian artists in their circle. A whirlwind affair ensues, and the young seamstress finds herself swept up in an unfamiliar and exciting world of discovery.

A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.

Clelia, a self-made woman coming from humble means, travels back to Turin, her hometown, to scout locations for the successful Roman atelier she works for. At the hotel, she encounters some upper middle-class women and she finds herself drawn into their friendships.

Daisy and Viola are siamese twin sisters on the verge of turning 18 living in the suburbs of Naples. They are blessed with beautiful voices and thanks to their performances at weddings, communions and baptisms, they get the livelihood for the whole family. Kept isolated from the rest of the world by their own father who just exploits them in order to make money, their life turns upside-down when one of them falls in love for the first time and they discover that they can be separated.

A mosaic of several intertwined stories questioning the meaning of life, love and hope, set during the last six days in the life of Eluana Englaro, a young woman who spent 17 years in a vegetative state.

Longtime Italian cinema star Stefania Sandrelli (The First Beautiful Thing) is Alba, the mother of two very different adult sons. While Giorgio is a playboy who constantly cheats on his wife, Leonardo (Luca Argentero, Eat Pray Love) is always unlucky in love. When Leonardo finally meets the woman of his dreams, Sara, he brings her home to meet the family, but it appears this is not the first time that Sara has met Giorgio. Directed by Luca Lucini and stars Luca Argentero, Alessandro Gassman and Stefania Sandrelli.

When a fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during World War II, his fiancée falls in love with the local Italian commander.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.

A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.

The final part of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life series is rich with exotic tales of slaves and kings, potions, betrayals, demons and, most of all, love and lovemaking in all its myriad forms. Mysterious and liberating, this is an exquisitely dreamlike and adult interpretation of the original folk tales.

Married for eight years with no children, Brits Katherine and Alex Joyce are driving to Italy, their ultimate destination just outside of Naples to sell the villa they have just inherited from his uncle, the villa where they will be staying during their time there. On the drive, they come to the realization that this trip marks the first time that they have truly been alone together, and as such don't really know one another in the true sense.

Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.

Everyone in Marco's life seems constantly restless, from his brilliant but unhappily married parents to his own wife Marina, or even Luisa, the real love of his life, a girl he met during a fateful summer in the '70s and always stayed in touch with. Tragedy and fate seem to haunt him, yet he somehow manages never to get ensnared in the chaos—like his namesake, “the hummingbird”, he focuses all his energy at standing still.

Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.

In the immediate post-war period, amidst the rubble of a poverty-ridden Naples, two kids, Carmine and Celestina, try to survive as best they can by helping each other out. One night, they secretly board a ship bound for New York to reach Celestina’s sister, who emigrated to America several years earlier. The two children join the many Italian emigrants seeking a new life in America and arrive in an unknown metropolis, which, after several misadventures, they will learn to call home.

It's 1348. The plague has brutally hit Florence. A group of then young people, seven women and three men, rebel against the feeling of death that is about to swallow them. They flee the city and find refuge in an abandoned villa in the Tuscan hills. Here, between moral doubts and the tasks needed to survive, they kill time by telling each other stories until they will decide to return. The stories are varied - tragic, bizarre, funny or erotic - but common and central to all of them is the female presence.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Francesco and Claudia are best friends. They're inseparable and tell each other everything, until another man enters the picture stealing Claudia's heart. Francesco then realizes that friendship between man and woman is a complicated thing.

Mike Hamilton, a Philadelphia lawyer, comes to Naples to settle the estate of his long estranged "black sheep" brother. Once there, he discovers that the deceased has left an 8 year old boy who is being raised by Michael's sister-in-law Lucia Curcio. To make matters worse, Lucia happens to be a sexy nightclub dancer.

Fleeing 1930s New York and leaving behind a chequered past, the giltzy divorcee Mrs Stella Erlynne travels to Italy's sun-dappled Amalfi coast. Mrs Erlynne's appearance causes a stir amongst the visiting aristocracy. Based on the Oscar Wilde play "Lady Windemere's Fan."

An adolescent girl, living with her mother and her grandmother, will have her first sexual experiences in a heavy and excessive way.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

Gilda has long since moved to a small southern island and earns her living as a prostitute in a context suspended between retrograde traditions and modernity. During one summer, his destiny intersects with that of Olivia and Crocetta, two women from the area, the former a happy wife and the latter an ugly, unlucky wife. The three are forced by fortuitous circumstances to come together to save themselves but their behavior attracts the suspicions of Nino Malachia, a brusque police commissioner who is convinced that they are hiding something.

Eli has four children, an unemployed husband and a job with an almost impossible commute. Vale is single and makes ends meet by working in clubs as a dancer. Tied by a profound emotional bond of true sisterhood, the two women's lives are two sides of the same coin, but their mutual solidarity isn’t always enough to lighten the load of their difficult circumstances.

A man is broken hearted at the loss of his lover, then later visits the same pain on the next woman with whom he becomes involved.

A beautiful girl Rosina lives In Rome. Her husband is strong as a bull and jealous as Shakespeare's Othello. Once the husband of Rosina kills a wealthy aristocrat, who sang the serenade to his wife, and now he is hiding from justice.

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.

When Jane is rejected by life, she spirals into a chaotic, schizophrenic world where love and normality collide with humorous consequences.

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.

Set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, a series of dramatic, consequential events unfold after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier, who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with a provincial family’s eldest daughter.

Grazia is a free-spirited mother-of-three married to shy fisherman Pietro and living on the idyllic but isolated island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. She shows signs of manic depressive behavior — one moment she's laughing wildly and swimming half-naked in the sea, while the next she's curled in a ball on her bed. Out of her earshot, the adult members of her extended family vaguely discuss sending her to a facility of some sort in Northern Italy.

Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.

A three-part anthology about love and sexuality: a menage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany; an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work, who, during visits to his psychiatrist, is pulled to delve into the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in a recurring erotic dream; a story of unrequited love about a beautiful, 1960s high-end call girl in an impossible affair with her young tailor.

Drowning in debt, two brothers concoct a plan to scam a wealthy heiress and save their home in Naples — but unexpected love soon complicates the scheme.

Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.

To honor her best friend's last wish, a young woman with severe anxiety confronts her greatest fears to try and reclaim her life — and perhaps find love.

The film tells the story of the Michelucci family, from the nineteen-seventies to the present day: the central character is the stunningly beautiful Anna, the lively, frivolous and sometimes embarrassing mother of Bruno and Valeria. Everything begins in the Summer of 1971, at the annual Summer beauty pageant held at Livorno’s most popular bathing establishment. Anna is unexpectedly crowned “Most Beautiful Mother”, unwittingly stirring the violent jealousy of her husband. From then on, chaos strikes the family and for Anna, Bruno and his sister Valeria, it is the start of an adventure that will only end thirty years later.

A 16-year-old Sicilian becomes the target of a mafia hit man after refusing to go through with her prearranged marriage.

Carlino Vigetti is pushed by his family to court the daughters of the Osti, landowners. But the return of their third daughter, the beautiful Francesca, will shatter the plans ...

Francesco is a psychoanalyst grappling with three hopeless causes: a bookseller in love with a book thief, a lesbian hell-bent on becoming straight after a heartbreak, and an 18-year-old in a relationship with a much older married man. Unfortunately, these patients are also his three beloved daughters!

A chambermaid and a former cop meet at a speed dating event and a romance develops. But during a romantic getaway things suddenly take a turn for the worse when her mysterious past is revealed.

Veronica is brilliant, gifted and beautiful, but the handsome aristocrat she loves, Marco Venier, cannot marry her because she is penniless and of questionable family. So Veronica's mother, Paola, teaches her to become a courtesan, one of the exotic companions favored by the richest and most powerful Venetian men. Veronica courageously uses her charms to change destiny -- and to give herself a chance at true love.

Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920s English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.

After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.

Movie director Niccolò has just been left by his wife. Subsequently he embarks on an obsessive relationship with a young woman who eventually leaves him and disappears while searching for her, he meets a variety of other willing girls. This gives him the idea of making a movie about women's relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie.

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

Clara and Felice struggle to raise their three children in 1970s Rome. The eldest, Andrew, is transgender and yearns for another life where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Clara instinctively strives to protect her son by escaping into their imaginations to defuse family tensions.

When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.

After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.

In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.

Carpenter Arturo becomes a literary sensation when the children's stories he writes in his spare time get published, but he comes to resent success and the spotlight that comes with it. During a press tour he falls in love with beautiful married woman, Matilde.

The troubled relationship between Gianni and Nino, set in the narrow-minded and prejudicial Sicily of 1982.

Τwo sisters from the island of Andros, dubbed Little England because of its affluence, are both in love with the same man. Set in the Greek Civil War period and ending in the 1950s, the movie is based on the homonymous novel by Ioanna Karystiani.

Problems arise for Antonio Magnano when he is unable to consummate his marriage to the beautiful Barbara Puglisi and his virility is called into question. Despite the fact that he loves his beautiful wife and they have otherwise been happily married for a year, his problem becomes a source of contention for all concerned.

A young man returns to his countryside hometown to investigate the unclear circumstances behind the death of his father, ostensibly killed by Fascists in 1936, before his birth. As he unravels a web of lies that seems to encompass the whole town, he finds himself entangled in the same web.

Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.

Pietro is a successful businessman with a wife and a daughter. One day he helps his brother save two women from drowning at the beach. When he returns home he finds that his wife has died. Now Pietro has to take care of his daughter, Claudia. When he drives her to school soon after, he decides to wait for her all day in front of the school, and soon that's what he does every day.

A man moves his two daughters to Italy after their mother dies in a car accident, in order to revitalize their lives. Genoa changes all three of them as the youngest daughter starts to see the ghost of her mother, while the older one discovers her sexuality.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

Modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello in which Iago is an architecture student in love with Desdemona, the dean's daughter.

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

As a child, Jack believed the tender lie his parents told him, that Gio was a special being with superpowers, as in a comic book. Now that he is about to go to high school, however, Jack no longer believes that his brother is a superhero, in fact, he is almost ashamed of him, especially since he met Arianna, the first love of his life.

35-year-old Alice has a husband and a son. Her life seems a beautiful dream, but it soon turns out to be a nightmare. Her husband dies in a car accident and her lawyer tells her that she is on her uppers. The only way she has to earn money in a short time is by resorting to the oldest job in history.

How much do we really know about ourselves when we make a decision? What if there are multiple versions of our I within us, each with something to say?

A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his late wife.

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.

Matteo is a young successful businessman, audacious, charming and energetic. Ettore instead, is a calm, righteous, second grade teacher always living in the shadows, still in the small town from where both come from. They’re brothers but with two very different personalities. A dramatic event will force them to live together in Rome for a few months, bringing up the opportunity to face their differences with sympathy and tenderness, in a climax of fear and euphoria.

A young woman from the Italian countryside experiences the dark side of the business after she moves to Rome to become a star.

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Paolo is an outgoing and handsome real estate broker married to Simona, a beautiful woman from the rough outskirts of Rome who has become an author of spicy bestsellers and is pregnant with their child. Betta, Paolo’s sister and her husband Sandro organise a dinner party with Paolo, Simona and their childhood friend, the eccentric musician Claudio. During the lively gathering Paolo reveals what he would like to name his son, causing reactions to steam up and a torrent of revelations to follow reaching climactic proportions.

On the eve of his wedding, on holiday on the Lake Annecy shore, a career diplomat visits an old acquaintance, perhaps a former girlfriend. Through her he meets an intense teenager, Laura, and then lusts after her sister, Claire. Whilst Laura attempts to flirt with him, his fantasy becomes focused on wanting to caress Claire's knee.

A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.

Puglia. Burnt by the sun and by hatred, the promontory of Gargano is contested by criminals who seem to come from a remote past governed by the law of the jungle. An archaic land reminiscent of the Far West, in which blood is washed away with blood. An old feud between two rival families is rekindled by a forbidden love: the one between Andrea, reluctant heir of the Malatesta, and Marilena, beautiful wife of the boss of the Camporeale clan. A fatal passion that sets the two clans at war again. But Marilena, banished by the Camporeale and prisoner of the Malatesta, disputed and abused, will oppose a fate already written with a mother’s strength.

Lucia is a young and talented advertiser but is out of luck when it comes to love. Madly in love with her best friend's boyfriend, she struggles with her feelings when they are set to get married.

In 1930s France, two sisters who are thought to be able to communicate with ghosts meet a visionary producer while performing in Paris.

A disturbed, aging Southern belle moves in with her sister for solace — but being face-to-face with her brutish brother-in-law accelerates her downward spiral.

Construction worker Oreste and young fiancee Adelaide meet Nello, a cook in a pizzeria. This love triangle often goes to communist rallies, and enjoys the filthy beaches of Ostia. Will the hostile environment pave a way to jealousy?

While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Mariano has been married for 10 years with Miranda, a woman way out of his league. Their small-town life is disrupted by womanizing photographer Andrea, who — struck by her good looks — offers Miranda a one-time modelling job. Albeit hesitant, the couple eventually accepts his invitation to the Seychelles...

A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.

Young and in prison for theft, Daphne falls in love with Josh, another inmate. Their love story exists through secret letters and fleeting conversations.

Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists.

Chronicling one harrowing day in the life of Luciana, a young woman struggling to make ends meet while striving to escape her past. As Luciana’s day unfolds, she is whisked, physically and emotionally, through a series of troublesome, unforeseeable extremes.
