JANUARY 25, 2016
Being in the height of awards season talk, we’ve been concentrating on discussing the handful of movies that are being nominated or in contention for the major critics groups or guilds or the Oscar. There seems to be at least one big award being handed out every weekend — this weekend was the very influential Producers Guild of America award, which went to the late-charging “The Big Short,” which gives the economic satire even more momentum in this very close race.
But in the midst of all of this awards craziness, we sometimes forget that there are some really good movies out there that aren’t in the awards conversation. And one of those is Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth.”
Sorrentino, arguably the hottest Italian director around, has been compared in his visual style to the late Italian master Federico Fellini. Like Fellini, Sorrentino loves people with unusual faces and places them in striking, almost painterly, situations. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with “The Great Beauty,” a fantasia capturing the party life among upper-class Romans in the style of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” stuffing (though I’d say overstuffing) the film with striking images of life among the jet set.
If “The Great Beauty” was Sorrentino’s version of “La Dolce Vita,” “Youth” is his take (at least in setting) on Fellini’s “8 1/2.” The film takes place in a fancy Swiss spa where legendary composer and conductor Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), who has composed many pieces in his lifetime but is known primarily for one, a work entitled “Simple Songs,” is vacationing with his best friend, filmmaker Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel).
The composer has a bone to pick with his friend, as Doyle’s son has just dumped his wife Lena (Rachel Weisz), who is also Ballinger’s daughter, to run away with international pop star Paloma Faith (as herself). The son’s explanation? “She’s good in bed.” So a heartbroken Lena is staying close to her father’s side.
Ballinger is then asked by the Queen’s emissary to conduct “Simple Songs” in honor of Prince Phillip’s birthday, but the composer shocks the emissary by refusing outright, since he feels that the only person who can properly sing the piece is his wife who is now senile.
Ballinger has also struck up a friendship at the spa with American actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano), who is anxious to try on new roles but who, like the composer, is primarily known for one work — in Tree’s case it’s a superhero movie where he played a robot. The pair go off on long walks discussing the differences between old age and youth.
For his part, Boyle has surrounded himself with a small army of young bearded screenwriters in hopes of making his final magnum opus. But to get funding, he knows that he has to get his muse, aging diva Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda, in a wild blonde wig) to agree to be in the film.
Though it must sound like the plot of “Youth” is complicated, it really isn’t. It’s much more of a mood piece, with Ballinger contemplating the years he has left, and Boyle wondering whether he can manage to make the one great final film before he dies. Because they’re not at the mercy of plot twists, Caine and Keitel offer some of their best work in years, as Sorrentino gives them the room to let their characters breathe. In fact, the level of the acting is high all around, and Fonda is absolutely dynamite in her one climactic scene.
“Youth” lives or dies on the quality of Sorrentino’s imagery, and when he creates compositions of the landscape or the faces of the spa goers, the film absolutely flies.
When asked what “Youth” is about, the honest answer would have to be “Aah…I’m not sure.”
But it’s absolutely gorgeous to watch.
GRADE: B
