Youth (La giovinezza) (2015)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writer:    Paolo Sorrentino
Cast:       Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano

A retired orchestra conductor (Michael Caine) is on a holiday with his daughter (Rachel Weisz) and his film director best friend (Harvey Keitel), his daughter's soon to be ex-father-in-law as well, in the Alps when he receives an invitation from Queen Elizabeth to perform for Prince Philip's birthday.

Like Sorrentino's 'The Consequences of Love', this film also have a protagonist staying in a posh hotel and having an existential crisis. Last film of his- The Great Beauty, which won academy award in the Best foreign film category, also had a protagonist reflecting back on his life. When Sorrentino reaches Youth (Ironic title), the protagonist gets progressively older and it is a story of eternal struggle between age and youth, the past and the future, life and death, commitment and betrayal. Like all Sorrentino films, it is quite hard to describe and if you attempt to do that you will very much sound like a pretentious idiot. His films are what a normal audience would class as pretentious but I do enjoy them immensely. Youth is much more accessible than 'The Great Beauty' and there are plot related events to actually jolt the viewer into paying attention if they indeed drift. I haven't seen his only other English Language film (This Must be the Place) and I don't normally enjoy it when directors make films in languages in which they are not very comfortable. I didn't feel like that with this effort and dialog is minimal anyway.

Cast is quite great and it was good to see Harvey Keitel on this one. It was also good to see Paul Dano playing a normal natured kind of character. Alex Macqueen, Julius Nicholson (Baldemort) from The Thick Of It, plays the role of Queen's emissary and it would have been apt if his character was named Julius Nicholson in this one as well. In terms of the plot (Spoilers ahead), I understood it as Michael Caine's character finding his wife dead when he go and meets her in Venice after a gap of ten years. Which is why he decides to accept Queen's invitation. (Wiki says she is just senile but it looked like dead to me but if otherwise also it makes sense regarding his change in decision).  Also in that Harvey Keitel sequence, in which a stream of women appears in a surreal manner, seemed to have Caine's wife as well, which might be a suggestion of an affair between them.

It is a great watch if you are a fan of Sorrentino and know what is coming. If you haven't seen any other films of his, then you might be better off doing it one by one chronologically from his filmography to see the progression in themes. I wasn't as mind-blown as I was when I watched 'The Great Beauty' but it is nevertheless a great watch. Michael Caine will be a serious contender for Best Actor awards in this year's awards season.

Rating: 4/5

                                                                              

La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty) (2013)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writers:  Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello
Cast:       Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli
Language: Italian

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty- i.e. underneath all the blah, blah, blah....

Jep moved to Rome after writing his first and only novel, Human Apparatus, which is considered as a masterpiece. Since then he has lived the high society life in a prolonged semi-retired state writing cultural columns and interviewing arty-farty people for a lifestyle magazine. You can obviously draw comparisons with the Fellini masterpiece 'La Dolce Vita', but Jep is someone who is much higher in the food chain when it comes to Roman socialites. As he states in the film, he didn't just want to attend parties but wanted the power to make them fail. The shock from the past comes when a man, who was his first love's husband, comes to him and informs him of her death. He also tells him that Jep was her only true lover and she considered her husband just as a great companion. The incident serves him to reflect on his own life which seems unfulfilled. Being a self-aware person, one would think that it is something that he would have already thought of but it does seem to trigger something more. 

Sorrentino gives us a series of scenes through which we get a glimpse of Jep's lifestyle, which very much involves him attending many art events most of which are pretentious and hollow. Jep is at a stage in his life where he can see through all the bullshit. In a scene where he verbally undresses a socialite who masquerades as a writer, he states:

"We're all on the brink of despair, all we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little... Don't you agree? "

He is also contemptuous of people around him including himself and he sees things like funerals as a high society event where you need to hit all the right notes to appear nobly sorrowful without stealing the bereaved's thunder. He also proceeds to quiz people from religious institutions but one senses that he already know that they are also similar to how his friends are.The final encounter is with a Mother Teresa like nun who celebrates poverty which her PR bandwagon amplifies tenfold. She is 104 years old, the same age Mother Teresa would have been if she was alive at the time when  this film came out. She is also portrayed as someone who pushes the agenda of institution she belongs to and is evident when she claims to know the Christian names of migrating birds who are taking a rest in Jep's balcony. That said, she is not put down to the extent that others were. There is no big epiphany for Jep, but a gradual sense of enlightenment as he reflects on things. He tells her that he didn't write a second novel because he was looking for the great beauty which he was not able to find. The film ends with him reminiscing about the first sex he had with his only true lover and stating:

"This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life, hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah... It's all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise, silence and sentiment, emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world, blah, blah, blah... Beyond there is what lies beyond. And I don't deal with what lies beyond. Therefore... let this novel begin. After all... it's just a trick. Yes, it's just a trick. "

This was my second viewing of this film which I considers as the best one from 2013. You do get the feel that director is taking us into Jep's shoes, who is basically the director himself, and see the world through his eyes. So it is basically an observational film with an anthological feel rather than one with some plot revolving around a protagonist. Stunning visuals/cinematography and soundtrack are a given in Sorrentino films and Tony Servillo is great as always. Sorrentino can really film a party scene with the first one in the film lasting close to eight minutes or so. I have't seen the Sean Penn starring 'This Must be the Place' and didn't enjoy 'Il Divo' that much. 'Consequences of Love' and 'Family Friend' were both excellent but 'The Great Beauty' is indeed my favorite Sorrentino film.

Rating: 5/5

                                                                    

Le conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love) (2004)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writer:    Paolo Sorrentino
Cast:       Toni Servillo, Olivia Magnani, Adriano Giannini
Language: Italian

Titta di Girolamo (Toni Servillo) is an introverted man living in a hotel for the last ten or so years. He is an insomniac, regular irregular heroin user (its complicated) and there is something dark about his past. He falls for the hotel barmaid which has its own consequences.

This was the first film of Sorrentino that I watched some years back and I loved it then but maybe for different reasons than for loving it again during my second watch. Sorrentino is someone who can make any scene amazingly stylish with some thumping soundtrack and the presence of his protagonist in slow-mo. The film starts off with the line: 'A person who likes to spend a lot of time alone should be very imaginative'. Servillo's characters in both this film and 'The Great Beauty' are people with whom I can identify a lot with. A life in a hotel would suit me fine as well. 

For me the film's title is a deception. The suicidal action taken by him is not necessarily due to him falling in love with the barmaid. It just acted as a trigger for him reacting to his bosses for taking away his freedom and there is great deal of build-up to it. His conversation with his brother sums up how people like me feel when idiots like them try to offer advise. People have different personalities and things that make you happy won't be necessarily what certain others would enjoy. So don't invite people to do things that you would enjoy as a privilege without due consideration about what they would prefer. 

Titta: In the world there's a certain kind of cult, with men and women of all social classes, of all ages and of all religions. It is the insomniacs cult. I'm part of it. For ten years. Those who don't belong to the cult sometimes tend to say: "If you can't sleep, you can read, watch TV, study or do something else". That kind of phrase is deeply annoying to the members of the cult. And the reason is simple. Cause the insomniac has only one obsession: to sleep.

Rating: 4.5/5

L'amico di famiglia (The Family Friend) (2006)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Writer:    Paolo Sorrentino
Cast:       Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Luigi Angelillo
Language: Italian

Geremia 'Kind of Heart' De Geremei is a sleazy moneylender who lives in a shabby house with his bedridden mother. He can do psychoanalysis on his customers based on his knowledge from reading 'Readers Digest' and believes goodies die young. He falls in love with a girl whose marriage he funds.

It is another great film from Paolo Sorrentino who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite film directors. He can make the mundane look stylish with thumping music and great camerawork. The film ends along predictable lines when Geremia forgets his risk management rules but it is a great watch. 

Rating: 4/5 

Il divo: La spettacolare vita di Giulio Andreotti (2008)

Director:Paolo Sorrentino
Writer:   Paolo Sorrentino
Cast:      Tony Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti
Language:Italian

The story of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, who has served as Prime Minsiter of Italy seven times since the restoration on democracy in 1946. The film depicts the period from Andreotti's seventh election in 1992, his failed bid for presidency, the Tangentopoli bribe scandal and his trial in 95 regarding his connections to mafia.

The film is done stylishly with great soundtrack as one would expect from a Sorrentino film. But it is difficult to keep up with the various characters and their relationship with Tony Servillo's character. It is not a huge problem as it is mainly about this character and deciphering what is going on in his head, like the journalist reports in the final scene of the film. It is good watch but I might have to revisit it to appreciate it more.

Rating: 3/5