Berlusconi was sleeping with the enemy, new biopic alleges
Silvio Berlusconi’s lifelong campaign against communism and judges in Italy, which helped to kickstart the global tide of populism, masked his real battle – against his wife, a new film claims.
Loro, a biopic of the three-time Italian prime minister directed by Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino, has stirred up memories of Berlusconi’s bunga-bunga years a decade ago, when his frolicking with nightclub dancers led to a messy divorce from his long-suffering spouse, Veronica Lario.
The sex-soaked film has two instalments and draws attention back to the notorious parties Berlusconi held in the basement of his villa near Milan. Its release comes as he prepares to stand trial this year for allegedly bribing female guests to lie about what they saw.
Berlusconi has said of the film: ‘‘People say it could be an act of political aggression against me. I hope the rumours are wrong.’’
A successful entrepreneur who promised to run Italy as efficiently as he ran his media companies, paving the way for Donald Trump’s brand of flashy politics, Berlusconi demonised communists and Italy’s judges.
But Sorrentino said Berlusconi confused communism with his real nemesis: his second wife, a former actress who grew increasingly angry at her husband’s dalliances during their 20-year marriage.
‘‘Berlusconi stressed anticommunism, he spoke a lot about it, but maybe he didn’t realise that what he considered ‘communism’, meaning opposition to him and his politics and to his idea of Italy, was there in his own home, in his bed, next to him,’’ Sorrentino told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Long suspected of left-wing sympathies, Lario demanded a divorce in 2009. She said she could not stay with a man who ‘‘frequented minors’’, after Berlusconi attended the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, a model who called him ‘‘Daddy’’.
Lario also objected to her husband’s plan to send Italian beauty queens to Strasbourg as members of the European Parliament.
A decade ago, Italy’s left was struggling for unity and Berlusconi was surrounded by acolytes and in firm control of state TV, so Lario was an unlikely voice denouncing his antics. Yet her criticism heralded his downfall. Within two years, in 2011, he had resigned amid sex scandals.