Director Paolo Sorrentino and his wife, Daniela D’Antonio, know how to celebrate his Oscar-buzzy film “The Hand of God.”
By throwing parties.
They recently hosted two dinners for friends at their Los Angeles Airbnb. And it’s not just any rental. Netflix has put up the couple, along with the movie’s young star Filippo Scotti and others from the “Hand of God” team, in a six-bedroom home that once belonged to Elizabeth Taylor, who lived there in the 1950s with then-husband Michael Wilding.
D’Antonio prepared the poolside meals for guests using old family recipes for pasta e patate con la provola, paccheri al ragù, parmigiana di melanzane, timballo di maccheroni con melanzane and pasta e ceci. Desserts included pandoro farcito, zeppole fritte and sfogliatelle.
Among the guests were David O. Russell, Craig Gillespie, Julianne Nicholson, Sorrentino’s UTA agent Rich Klubeck and Silvia Chiave, consul general of Italy in Los Angeles.
The parting gift for attendees was a 25-page glossy booklet (above) featuring stills from “The Hand of God” and five of D’Antonio’s recipes. “Neapolitan mothers do not ask their children, ‘How are you?’ but instead ‘Have you eaten?’” D’Antonio writes in the introduction. “If the kids naively (or fishing for attention) answer, ‘Nothing,’ a discussion closely related to a drama begins. It is a cross-cutting dynamic which knows no social or cultural barriers and has nothing to do with cultural stereotypes that still portray Italians like people stuck in the 1950s. It is a way of looking after that proves that food is at the core of Neapolitan culture.”
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