Life's Last Day

Rating: 1/10 (11 November 2017)

Gaspingly pretentious portrait of characters at a resort hotel and spa in the Swiss Alps. Michael Caine is a British widower and retired symphony conductor--an annual guest at the spa for some 20 years--who refuses a request from an emissary of the Queen of England to conduct again for Prince Philip's birthday celebration. Caine's grown daughter is temporarily staying with him; she's distraught over her recent breakup with the son of another guest, screenwriter Harvey Keitel, an exercise-friend of Caine's who commiserates with him over their combined years and non-working body parts. Other guests include a rock-climbing instructor, a film actor, assorted child prodigies, a beauty contest winner, et al. Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino has a grandiose visual concept, which he makes clear within the film's first 10 minutes; however, his artistically-composed shots of naked, sagging bodies (usually slumped over in states of depression, inert in the steam rooms or floating aimlessly in the swimming pools) are not especially pointed or amusing. The shots call attention themselves, probably to distract the viewer from the lack of substance in the writing (or interest in the central characters). Caine, pinkish-white like a rabbit, seems to look out at the world with bleary eyes--but is this the character or simply the actor in bad physical shape? Keitel doesn't appear very spry either, but the worst is saved for Jane Fonda (in a bad blonde wig) as a jaded, foulmouthed actress just in from Los Angeles (she asks Keitel expository questions to set the scene: "How long have we known each other, Mick?"). "Youth" flatlines at the one-hour mark--with another 63 minutes on the clock. * from ****