Review: Youth

Youth, Paolo Sorrentino's follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza), ponders the themes of the inevitable effects of aging, the fragility of memory, and the insatiable thirst for fulfillment, whether it be personal or professional. Never less than stunning to look at, the film often suffers a certain meandering cohesion that renders it an ultimately fulfilling watch.

Taking place almost entirely in and around a luxurious hotel spa in the Swiss Alps, the film observes Fred Ballinger (a stellar Michael Caine), a retired composer who has been a frequent guest for the past 20 years. In tow is his daughter and personal assistant Lena (Rachel Weisz), who doesn't understand his reluctance to accept a lucrative offer to write his memoirs or a royal invitation from Buckingham Palace to conduct his most celebrated composition, "Simple Songs." The queen's emissary (Alex Macqueen) coaxes and cajoles, but Ballinger adamantly refuses, citing personal reasons for his refusal.

Where Ballinger wishes to disappear and be forgotten, his longtime crony Mick Boyle (a rejuvenated and plugged-in Harvey Keitel), also a guest at the hotel, has surrounded himself with a quintet of young screenwriters (Tom Lipinski, Chloe Pirrie, Alex Beckett, Nate Dern, Mark Gessner) to help him finish the screenplay to his latest film, which he believes will be the testament to his storied directorial career. The two men stroll the grounds, comparing notes on their daily urinary output (or lack thereof), placing bets on whether an old married couple will ever utter a word to one another, wondering if they shared one particular woman during their womanising past, and reflecting on memories lost and remembered.

The men are also in-laws and one of the dramatic turns of the film arrives when Lena is left by her husband Julian (Ed Stoppard), Boyle's son, for singer Paloma Faith (playing an exaggerated version of herself). Julian is immune to his father's advice to abandon his folly with "the most insignificant woman in the world" and return to Lena. His unapologetic son contends that Boyle was left by his wife and she never asked him to return. Ballinger is equally upbraided by Lena, who eviscerates her father for his own indiscretions and all-consuming devotion to music.

Elsewhere, Ballinger is befriended by Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano), an actor who is is annoyed that he is best known for playing a robot when he has worked with so many acclaimed filmmakers. Jimmy is touched when a young girl praises him for his role as a father in a little-seen film, and condescending when Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea) gushes over his most famous role. When he insults for her unsophisticated and simplistic tastes and for her participation in such a superficial competition, her spine visibly stiffens and she rightly pegs her behaviour as a sign of frustration. She is happy to have been in the pageant, she says, is he happy to have portrayed a robot?

Jimmy's skewering is gentle compared with the one Boyle receives from Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda), the actress he deems the greatest he ever worked with and who is slated to star in his next film. Brenda is a monstrous diva, brutally disabusing him of his artistic standing. Caked in full-on Norma Desmond/Baby Jane make-up and oozing acid from every pore, Fonda burns the screen. One wishes her appearance was more than a mere cameo.

Youth overflows with strikingly composed tableaus courtesy of Luca Bigazzi, whose images evoke memories of Fellini's 8 1/2, Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, Visconti's Death in Venice as well as portraits of the Old and Modern masters. A dream sequence featuring a nude woman catwalking down a flooded St. Mark's Square at night is especially knee-buckling in its visual splendour. Yet there is also a shot of Diego Maradona, belly bloated and barely breathing, as he kicks a tennis ball in soccer-like fashion. No one, not even the legends, can escape the clutches of old age.

Youth

Directed by: Paolo Sorrentino

Written by: Paolo Sorrentino

Starring: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Jane Fonda, Alex Macqueen, Luna Zimic Mijovic, Tom Lipinski, Chloe Pirrie, Alex Beckett, Nate Dern, Mark Gessner, Ed Stoppard, Paloma Faith, Madalina Diana Ghenea, Diego Maradona