Youth (15.)
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
Starring Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Alex McQueen and Jane Fonda. 118 mins
Youth, a film about ageing, is all about the incongruities. It has an international cast that seem deliberately mismatched. Caine and Keitel play lifelong best friends. There is an extraordinarily obese man who looks like Maradona, but isn’t; and an ageing actress who doesn’t resemble Jane Fonda, but is. Sorrentino dumps all these elements in a luxury Swiss spa hotel and has them circle around the issues of life, love and forgetting. It is rambling and indulgent: a Fellini film but without a Fellini cast.
Sorrentino's follow up to The Great Beauty, has all the hallmarks of the one made after the masterpiece; the novel that comes after the Booker win or the film made after the Oscar. It's the one where the genius gets to relax and treat himself; the one where he doesn't see why he should follow the conventions of the lesser talents. Caine and Keitel are two artists, composer and film director respectively that have run out of steam and the film has a similar lethargy. It is beautifully shot and visually inventive but at walking pace. The characters sit around and talk about life and there is the sense that whatever half formed idea comes out is relevant and weighty.
Sorrentino is only in his mid 40s – it’s a little early to get this ambling and reflective. In his late thirties he was making Il Divo, a film with such unrelenting energy and vigorous visual control it was a little airless. Youth is all air, bracing fresh country air in which to relax. The film touches on themes, flits between characters but can’t work up the energy to really go after any of them. It’s a geriatric montage.
It's meandering but still has plenty to offer: a great music score, humour, scenery and strong performances. All his previous film centred on a strong main character, usually played by Toni Servillo, and though this is more of an ensemble, 82-year-old Caine plays the central figure in imperious form. There's a great irony in him playing a man brought low because age has reduced his creative powers, because Caine is at, or near, the peak of his powers here. About five years ago, around the time of Is Anyone There? and Harry Brown it looked as if the years were catching up with him and he was going to restrict himself to cameos and being Christopher Nolan's good luck charm. Here he seems remarkably unwithered, almost rejuvenated: all his great strengths, that coiled stillness, the measured control of the emotional release, are back with him.
Youth is a disappointment but it's still an engaging oddity. The title but Fame seems to its real subject. It has quite the strangest celebrity cameo ever: Paloma Faith turns up as herself and gets to be called “the most insignificant woman on earth,” by Keitel. Then she has her music video used as another character’s nightmare.
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
Starring Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Alex McQueen and Jane Fonda. 118 mins
Youth, a film about ageing, is all about the incongruities. It has an international cast that seem deliberately mismatched. Caine and Keitel play lifelong best friends. There is an extraordinarily obese man who looks like Maradona, but isn’t; and an ageing actress who doesn’t resemble Jane Fonda, but is. Sorrentino dumps all these elements in a luxury Swiss spa hotel and has them circle around the issues of life, love and forgetting. It is rambling and indulgent: a Fellini film but without a Fellini cast.
Sorrentino's follow up to The Great Beauty, has all the hallmarks of the one made after the masterpiece; the novel that comes after the Booker win or the film made after the Oscar. It's the one where the genius gets to relax and treat himself; the one where he doesn't see why he should follow the conventions of the lesser talents. Caine and Keitel are two artists, composer and film director respectively that have run out of steam and the film has a similar lethargy. It is beautifully shot and visually inventive but at walking pace. The characters sit around and talk about life and there is the sense that whatever half formed idea comes out is relevant and weighty.
Sorrentino is only in his mid 40s – it’s a little early to get this ambling and reflective. In his late thirties he was making Il Divo, a film with such unrelenting energy and vigorous visual control it was a little airless. Youth is all air, bracing fresh country air in which to relax. The film touches on themes, flits between characters but can’t work up the energy to really go after any of them. It’s a geriatric montage.
It's meandering but still has plenty to offer: a great music score, humour, scenery and strong performances. All his previous film centred on a strong main character, usually played by Toni Servillo, and though this is more of an ensemble, 82-year-old Caine plays the central figure in imperious form. There's a great irony in him playing a man brought low because age has reduced his creative powers, because Caine is at, or near, the peak of his powers here. About five years ago, around the time of Is Anyone There? and Harry Brown it looked as if the years were catching up with him and he was going to restrict himself to cameos and being Christopher Nolan's good luck charm. Here he seems remarkably unwithered, almost rejuvenated: all his great strengths, that coiled stillness, the measured control of the emotional release, are back with him.
Youth is a disappointment but it's still an engaging oddity. The title but Fame seems to its real subject. It has quite the strangest celebrity cameo ever: Paloma Faith turns up as herself and gets to be called “the most insignificant woman on earth,” by Keitel. Then she has her music video used as another character’s nightmare.
