Fred and Mick, two old friends, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer and conductor, is now retired. Mick, a film director, is still working. They ... See full summary
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writer: Paolo Sorrentino
Stars: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz
Storyline
Fred and Mick, two old friends, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at
the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer and conductor, is now retired.
Mick, a film director, is still working. They look with curiosity and
tenderness on their children's confused lives, Mick's enthusiastic young
writers, and the other hotel guests. While Mick scrambles to finish the
screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred
has no intention of resuming his musical career. But someone wants at
all costs to hear him conduct again.
Movie Reviews:
Paolo Sorrentino's
latest movie, the director's return to Cannes after the worldwide
success gained with the Best Foreign Movie Oscar (yet the Croisette
didn't particularly liked the film which later on won at the Academy
Award), could and should be appreciated by the Neapolitan
director-screenwriter's admirers, for his usual subtlety of camera work
and the and memorable lines, as well as by his detractors, for the
unexpectedly solid and consistent story development, something that in
the past The Great Beauty's director has seldom achieved. And indeed
there is much more beauty in Youth than in Sorrentino's former hit,
exactly for the savvy mix of images and narration, for the excellent
compactness of the cinematic language and writing, regrettably missing
in the calligraphic series of beautiful images that made up The Great
Beauty. In an exclusive and secluded thermal hotel on the Swiss Alps
gather, like elephants at a savanna watering hole at dusk, guests of
every age and origin, each looking for something different but all
joined by the lack of this "something". With the calm and lightness of a
glider, the movie flies over Fred, a retired great musician and
conductor searching his human dimension in addition to his musical one,
and Mick, a famous director searching a last movie which could amazingly
seal a career that, however glittering, started to show the
unmistakable signs of a slow decline. The movie takes the viewer, with
crafty and touching empathy, to the final results of these searches,
harmonic for Fred, dystonic for Mick. Captivating in the title choice,
identifying youth with the inner search and growth rather than the body
biological age, Youth is structured in dwindling layers, strongly
integrated and unified: a protagonist (a self-controlled and convincing
Michael Caine as Fred), a co-protagonist (the dependable Hervey Keitel
as Mick), two secondary characters (an emotionally involved Rachel Wiesz
as Fred's daughter and a cautious and endearing Paul Dano as the
Californian star), circled by a chorus of characters painted with few
yet definite strokes, reminding of the Commedia dell'Arte: the football
legend beyond Sunset Boulevard, the masseuse of few words, the Alpine
guide, Miss Universe, the Queen representative, the 100% made in
Hollywood movie star (an ironic and charismatic yet ineffective Jane
Fonda), the mixed group of your screenwriters, the silent couple….. The
risky strategy of mixing faked reality (the Queen, the real pop start,
the football star) to real narration proved to pay off: most probably
Youth shall not gather the prizes and success of The Great Beauty but
surely represents a clear leap forward towards Paolo Sorrentino's full
maturity as a director and a screenwriter.
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