You review: Il Divo

The critics adore this Cannes jury prize-winner about the life of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti. They've lapped up its visual flair, the bravura performances and the film-makers' refusal to follow the political biopic's established tropes. It's an audacious attempt to permeate the sphinx-like persona of the man dubbed Il Divo Giulio (the divine Julius), a nod to his Caesar-like influence over Italian politics in the latter part of the 20th century. Yet there are some who feel the director struggles to cope with the torrent of material available.

Il Divo centres on Andreotti's final years in power, between his election in 1992 and the trial the following year in which he was accused of collusion with the mafia. The previous 45 years are sketched in flashback. Sorrentino paints his subject as a wily, inscrutable figure whose only goal was the retention of power. Yet this is a film which vilifies Andreotti on a personal, rather than moral level, taking great pains to point out that he was never actually convicted of anything much at all.

"Il Divo (or The God) is composed in Sorrentino's unique and unmistakable style, with masque-like ensemble scenes, rectilinear camera positions, Steadicam-swoops along vertiginous perspectives and sudden pulses of jagged, angular electropop on the soundtrack," writes our own Peter Bradshaw.

"The satire is dry, harsh, almost scorched in its texture: there is no gentleness, no emollient inner life to Sorrentino's bewilderingly huge cast of characters; they have no humanising touches and appear motivated by fear and gain, in that order - although Andreotti has moments of droll intimacy with his wife."

"From the very start of the film, when he obscures Andreotti's head with the glowing white orb of a light shade, Sorrentino delights in playing absurdist visual jokes on the audience," writes the Times' Wendy Ide.

"He has immense fun at the expense of the gnome-like Prime Minister's protruding ears, setting up visual echoes throughout the picture. He juxtaposes shots of a thoroughbred, mane streaming, winning a horse race with a ponytailed hitman astride a motorcycle. The cinematography is audaciously stylish, the editing sharp. It's a dazzlingly cinematic experience.

"There is one significant problem, certainly for non-Italian audiences. Despite copious, frequently playful use of onscreen text, the Andreotti political legacy proves to be bafflingly labyrinthine."

The film's bravura brushstrokes certainly impress the Hollywood Reporter's Peter Brunette. "The frequently outrageous Il Divo follows the career of one of the best-known and most tenacious figures in Italian political history in a lively, sensory-overload, cartoonlike fashion reminiscent of Amelie and Moulin Rouge ... The fact that it's often over-the-top goes with saying, and is part of the fun. Toni Servillo does a magnificent job of interpreting, or rather channeling, Andreotti - down to his trademark stiff slouch, dour, unrevealing face and devastating one-liners."

Not so the Telegraph's Tim Robey: "I'll confess: the entire thing defeated me ... Just when you think this overworked enigma is getting a little tired at the hour mark, there's a massive bombardment of further exposition – junior cabinet ministers, Vatican envoys; you name 'em, I can't – that's pure hell to follow, unless you're seriously steeped in the ins and out of pre-Berlusconi Italian politicking."

Robey certainly has a point: there is a huge amount of information to take in here if Andreotti's antics are new to you. Yet I very much enjoyed the lurid opera of Sorrentino's film. For a man who is something of a blank canvas, Andreotti makes a fascinating, charismatic puppetmaster. As Sorrentino himself has observed, this seems to be a politician with class and presence that surpasses even that of his successor, Silvio Berlusconi.

Did you catch Il Divo at the weekend? And if so, are you bowing before Sorrentino's godlike genius, or wondering what the fuss is about?