Review: 'La Grazia' reunites a dependable Italian duo for a rumination on the end of a political career

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We should be grateful for filmmakers who have a special artistic relationship with an actor: Akira Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune, Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro and, by all indications, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone.Count the Italian duo of Paolo Sorrentino and star Toni Servillo among them, a fertile partnership that began nearly 25 years ago with the director’s first film (“One Man Up”) and continues with their seventh together, the political drama “La Grazia” (“Grace”).The wielding of power seems to be a frequent backdrop for these two, with “La Grazia” — about an Italian president facing tough decisions as he ends his term of office — marking the third time Sorrentino has asked his favorite leading man to be a head of state, following their breakthrough 2008 collaboration “Il Divo” (about Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti) and 2018’s romp about Silvio Berlusconi, “Loro.” The difference this time is that, while the other two films centered controversial real-life figures, Servillo’s character in “La Grazia” is fictional, yet pressured to deal with contentious issues.

The result is a much more somber, ruminative exploration of morality in governmental authority than the stylish violence of “Il Divo” and exploitative raunch of “Loro.”A decade after his lush Oscar-winning bacchanal “The Great Beauty” (starring an especially great you-know-who), Sorrentino is no less drawn to pictorial beauty or arresting visuals.But there’s a grayer, graver tone to the long shadows of “La Grazia,” as if the natural, appealing gravitas of Servillo playing an important man fighting a planned obsolescence was the only palette Sorrentino and cinematographer Daria D’Antonio needed.

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