only the scenery is worth watching

Rating: 3/10 (21 April 2018)

I wonder if either Michael Caine or Harvey Keitel regrets having made this movie? One wonders what they thought of the project when proposed, and what they thought after seeing the result. I don't know about Keitel, but Caine certainly doesn't need the money, so one wonders why he signed on to such a pretentious, artsy-fartsy piece of balderdash. Unless, as I say, the project sounded different when presented. First of all, there is no coherent story line. Oh there' s plenty of family acrimony between father and daughter, and some confict between a pair of lovers splitting up, and a scenery-chewing scene between two elderly, separated show business types reaching the end sof their lives and careers. And of course the reference to homsexuality that is de rigeur nowadays. But they are presented as isolated threads with no unifying theme to draw them together. Then we have the pretentiousness. A plethora of cryptic and obscure scenes with weird stagings oddly shot, reminiscent of Fellini, are scattered throughout the film, like trash over a landscape, and make the viewer wonder just what the hell is going on at that particular moment. It wasn't quite bad enough to make me stop the film in the middle, but that is only because of the gorgeous cinematography of the Swiss landscape. Still, I wish, as they say, that I could have my two hours back.