Parthenope (film)
If you watch the trailer of Parthenope, you may think that it's just a very typical film talking about a beautiful girl who has comparative advantages and popularity in society. The movie, in fact, is about humanity from the point of view of the girl's life.
Parthenope is the name of the girl in the movie. She is very beautiful while she is smart and curious about everything. While the majority may think a beautiful girl can take advantage of her appearance and popularity, she decides not to become an actress when she is referred, but instead focuses on academic career path of anthropology until she gloriously retires.
She witnesses and experiences various aspect of human life which show everything is possible and can be out of moral order and thus shocking. Almost everyone she meets asks her what she is thinking about. She does say,
Love, as a means of survival, has been a failure.
Or maybe not.
Humanity is not something that you can simply know more from reading or graduating from a course. Life is more than what we think so there are no standard answers. Anthropology is a way to study human but it's hard to tell easily what it is, and that's why Parthenope starts asking this question to her professor when she has an interview before being enrolled in the university.
The movie does arrange the professor to answer the question. He says anthropology is seeing, and seeing is the last thing we learn (in our life), as we are able to see after things fade, like love, desire... Seeing is not just looking at something visual, but it is involved in experience, understanding, acknowledgement and realisation.
Parthenope's life is not as bright as normal people think, but obviously she's not suffering as she at least has her successful career path. Life is comprised various forms which can't last forever. Life is full of grief and gain. A beautiful woman doesn't need to be an actress while she can live differently compared to what normal people think, and things you don't expect to see (like the son of the professor) can be fascinating, as it is somehow up to what we think.
Parthenope leads us to question and think about life. Everything we care about (too much) will eventually fade away, while new moments will come. The movie made me think of a fiction called Siddhatha, who has a lot of experience with gain and loss but finally acknowledges we don’t need to purse something in life. Whatever happens in our life, if we are willing to, we eventually have our own wisdom which can only be explored by us and can’t be transferred to others. Parthenope is obvious not like other beautiful girls because has her own experience and thoughts throughout her life.
There is a scene in the movie showing the old people sitting next to young Parthenope at home are usually less positive after a series of experiences when they're young, but is this the only path of our life? I think Parthenope’s smile in the last scene of the movie can give us some hints. Again, life is not an either yes-or-no thing. It needs to be understood which is not easy to understand.
