Fabietto (Filippo Scotti), far right, and the rest of his family in The Hand of God (Netflix)

Portraits of the artist as a young man are common enough and fairly easy to spot. Their protagonists are usually quiet, withdrawn, or ill at ease in the world. We see them navigate a unique cast of characters, come of age sexually and intellectually, and suffer the traumas that will come to define them, along with their discovery of their chosen artistic endeavor. If you watch too many of them in a row, they can become tiresome and might slowly convince you that “writing what you know” is not such a good thing after all. Still, there are many masterpieces, Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander and François Truffaut’s 400 Blows among them.

Paolo Sorrentino’s new film, the semi-autobiographical The Hand of God, checks many of the above boxes (though he may have had Federico Fellini in mind—one could argue this film is equal parts Amarcord and I Vitelloni). Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) is ill at ease in the world, being a teenager who lacks both friends and confidence, and is most comfortable with his family. We do see him struggle to make sense of certain relationships and later recuperate from a disaster that changes his life completely. Yet Sorrentino’s film is wrought with such attention to place and character, and contains such mysterious and compelling passages, that it feels immediately like something new, refreshing, specific. While it remains to be seen whether it will join the company of the movies listed above, it is at the very least one of the year’s strongest films.

It is set in the Naples of the 1980s. In the opening sequence, the camera approaches the city first by sea in an astonishing helicopter shot during the early morning hours. In The Great Beauty, Sorrentino proved himself as a master at capturing movement, and he is in top form here, whether following crowds through dark streets, motorcycles as they race along winding roads, or whether the camera moves on its own, giving viewers the impression that they are exploring the city.

This film is driven not so much by plot as by a meandering eye, which observes a variety of relationships and situations. Among them are Fabietto’s parents, Saviero (Toni Servillo) and Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), whose affections towards one another overflow in loving games when they are not in devastating fights; Fabietto’s mentally unstable aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri), subject to strange visions; his kind, listless brother, Marchino (Marlon Joubert), who wants to be an actor but lacks persistence; and his sister, Daniela (Rosella di Luca), who, cryptically, never leaves the bathroom.

As in The Great Beauty, Sorrentino portrays characters at their most lovable and at their least flattering, and here they are unstable and casually cruel. One has the sense that they are hovering over a precipice. The world Fabietto navigates is tenuous, and it seems that there is little that he can take for granted.

There are also visions and intimations of the presence of God, both of which concern Fabietto and Aunt Patrizia. Sorrentino’s intention in these sequences is not obvious, but they rivet the attention. Possibly, he intends to suggest that there is some link between chance, divinity, insanity, and creativity.

The city is as important to the film as its characters and events, and Sorrentino has stated in interviews that Naples, to him, represents the conjunction of the sacred and the profane. It is easy to spot this idea once it has been named. We can see it in Patrizia, who experiences visitations of divine significance with profane details and scandalizes the family by sunbathing naked. We can see it in the Argentine soccer player Diego Maradona, a secular figure who inspires God-like devotion, and whose presence in Fabietto’s life is much like divine intervention. (The “Hand of God” of the title refers to a famous goal made by Maradona.) What is less clear is what exactly to make of all this, but this is arresting rather than maddening. Naples, for Fabietto and the viewer, has become such a striking combination of elements that by the end it acquires the status of a riddle that cannot be solved but must constantly be returned to.

It may be that when Fabietto decides to leave home and become a filmmaker the film loses a bit of steam, and certain sequences might be a little ham-fisted. Still, images, people, and scenes linger long in the mind after viewing. One in particular, in which Maria frantically juggles oranges as she sobs—something we have seen her do before—struck me as beautifully absurd and devastating. The film is full of such moments. Like Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, a film it resembles in no other way, this is a film that does not leave viewers with settled feelings or interpretations, and this is as it should be. As a veteran filmmaker proclaims to Fabietto, you will never get away from Naples.