Less powerful variation on "La Grande Bellezza"

Rating: 5/10 (23 January 2016)

Following the huge success and critical acclaim of his film "La Grande Bellezza – The Great Beauty" in 2013, a winner of Oscars' Best Foreign Film for 2013 among numerous other awards, a modern favorite of mine and what I think was the best film of its year, the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's following film is "La Giovinezza - Youth", a film in English, with an English-speaking cast, for which he did the writing. After reviving the Felliniesque spirit in The Great Beauty and the modern, powerful tour-de-force cinematic ride that it was, it was inevitable that the following work, after losing the element of novelty, will never reach the same heights especially with the high expectations placed, unless the writer/director opted for a different style, which he did not. Youth was a continuation of the same theme.
The story follows two old friends, an orchestra conductor and a film director, played by the greats Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel in very fine performances, on long vacation in a luxury hotel at the Alps. They reflect on their lives, as well as their children's and the peculiar hotel guests', contemplating in a poetic way what makes life worth living.
As expected, collaboration with the cinematographer Luca Bigazzi yielded another feast for the eyes. The great cinematography, along with the impeccable acting, is probably what propels the film forward and makes it worth the admission fee. Writing, however, was the main low point of the film, with the bland, monotonic, over- baked dialogue that helped give the story an overall feeling of hollowness and pretentiousness. It is not Sorrentino's first attempt at writing and directing English films, but it can still be argued that a significant difference in the level of writing between the last two films suggest that the outcome might have been better if the film were in Italian.
Comparison with Sorrentino's previous film, however, is inevitable and the parallels are too many. In the previous film we had the ageing protagonist reflecting on the meaning of life and the modern decadence while wandering the streets of Rome and in between raucous parties with his rich, idle companions. Here the streets and rooftops of Rome are replaced by the Alps. A long polemic monologue ruthlessly slating a friend is replaced by one given by Rachel Weisz's character and another given by Jane Fonda's in an impressive cameo. Instead of the Catholic nun, we get a Buddhist monk, where the predictable storyline meant that the acquainted viewer would know before the end of the film whether we will be able to see him levitate or not.
Generally speaking, the film felt less surreal and magical even though it tried so hard at profundity and abstraction, the flat dialogue at most times was not helped by the persistence of the mountainous background, but the film definitely had its moments, the Maradona interludes an example, and the visual mastery and brilliant acting make the film worth watching. This was hardly surprising after The Great Beauty, but I sincerely hope Sorrentino bounces back in his next feature.