Going back to Naples and the tragedy that changed his life, The Great Beauty director evokes his adolescence with bawdy vigour
![The Hand of God review – Paolo Sorrentino exposes his childhood trauma](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/320b5a5cc8d81db9d422622d853c074476017950/571_0_2859_1716/master/2859.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=834400894f870ce2faaf33658e58d81f)
At 16, Paolo Sorrentino returned home to find that both his parents were dead, killed by a carbon monoxide leak. On the night of the tragedy, Sorrentino was inside a
Football stadium, watching Diego Maradona play for his local team, Napoli. Afterwards, he would say – not wholly joking – that Maradona saved his life.
More than three decades on, in the middle act of a career that has already won him an Oscar, the Italian film-maker has retraced his steps, turned back the clock and fashioned this foundational horror into a fevered coming-of-age tale, a movie that played to a capacity crowd here in Venice. The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands.