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Youth from Paolo Sorrentino. I'm looking forward to this.

Well, it certainly looks like The Great Beauty. I'd hoped for something a bit more removed from what he's done given it's got the cast that'll probably get it a somewhat larger mainstream appeal but nope seems like it's mostly the same.

FrauBlucher wrote:Youth from Paolo Sorrentino. I'm looking forward to this.

... and Michael Caine as Toni Servillo.

We shall see tomorrow if it makes the Cannes 2015 Selection, but herewith the first trailer for Sorrentino's follow up to LA GRANDE BELLEZZA, titled YOUTH it is on this first evidence very much in the same mold (although English language), with Michael Caine doing a convincing Toni Servillo/Jep Gampardella complete with designer glasses & slicked back grey mane... Judge for yourself... The Italian job?...

If Criterion gets the rights, this HAS to be the cover.

Fox Searchlight picked this up, which bodes well for awards season but means that a Criterion release is borderline impossible, at least for the next decade (unless Sorrentino has a Wes Anderson clause saying that Criterion gets dibs).

I don't know, that poster feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to ressurect Keitel's long-lost immodesty, or at least to provide a countershot that gives due highlight to the leads' sagging male flesh.

Thematically, the poster and the trailer seem miles apart.

Ergh... I had high expectations for this given I generally love Sorrentino and this recently was named Best Film at the European Film Awards, but this was a big disappointment. It completely lacked that trademark Sorrentino style of blending image and sound into seducing montages. It was all a bit stale, even with the infamous nude pool scene. By my reckoning both of Sorrentino's English language efforts have been his weakest.

The scene where Michael Caine conducts the cows (il Maestro e le mucche) on the mountainside is simply sublime...

Really? I was cringing.

I really liked Youth, especially the pacing (for the most part) and the gorgeous images. There were some nice moments in the Michael Caine-Rachel Weisz father-daughter relationship/back story and the unlikely Caine-Keitel pairing as old friends was fun to watch.

Have to say Jane Fonda's scene/cameo totally derailed the movie and was not only over the top but unnecessary. There's also a scene

Spoiler

where Harvey Keitel's director character sees his past leading ladies on a hillside that seemed out of place.

And

Spoiler

the scenes where Paul Dano dressed up as Hitler and comingled with the guests? What the hell...

TMDaines wrote:By my reckoning both of Sorrentino's English language efforts have been his weakest.

I have wondered if I might have enjoyed it more if it was an all Italian cast and whether the British/American actors were bit of a distraction to me.
I've also wondered if I enjoyed it so much because it was like taking a mini vacation I could never afford.

The ending was cribbed from one much better done, the finale of Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue.

The Keitel hilltop women scene seemed like a parody of Fellini: almost French & Saunders-esque.

Just saw this. Not sure what to say, except that I appreciated it's cover of Yes' "Onward". Especially poignant as it's writer, Chris Squire, passed away last year.

If Sorrentino's previous film was a tip-of-the-hat to La Dolce Vita, Youth seems preoccupied with Fellini's own follow-up of 8½. I seem to remember someone else pointing this out on the forum, but the numerous references to the earlier film struck me as overt when I watched Sorrentino's latest: the hotel/spa location with the images of guests dressed in towels queued in lines, the oppressive hallways and elevators, the early dream sequence where Caine's character is drowning (standing in for the Fellini scene of Mastroianni's character being trapped in the car), and the director's fantasy encounter with all of his leading ladies (a light nod to the long Fellini sequence of Mastroianni's character being coddled and chastised by the women in his life). The overall circus atmosphere is a given, right? I would say Sorrentino took the Guido Anselmi character from 8½ and split him into the three characters played by Caine, Keitel and Dano (but Caine got to wear the glasses).

That's not to say that I didn't like Youth, but the strongest moments were the simplest ones: the young boy encountering the composer who wrote the music he is attempting to play; the young girl who fondly recalls an obscure role played by the film actor and so on. The gallery of grotesques and magic realism tipped the film into heavy-handedness when the subtler story points were more effective.