Seeking the fountain of YOUTH?

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2015)

Youth is a realization of an intricate and funny magical realism script by Paolo Sorrentino, the director, exploring the rediscovery of passion in life. The story focuses on an aging and retired music composer, played by Michael Caine, and his friend, a feature film director working on what may be his last opus, played by Harvey Keitel. Every frame of the film is carefully composed and uses light, like a brush...one moment could be reminiscent of Raphael nudes, the next Dali. The story, set in an elitist spa in Switzerland, dallies in that lush landscape, pairing it with vistas and grottoes of water, highly paid for fountains of youth, where sirens bathe and old men ogle. A friend saw the nod to Fellini's 8 1/2. I saw an auteur with fresh and unexpected expression, as if Bergman spiced one of his early works with the Chinatown Kung Fu film tradition. Original, unique, a film you don't want to miss, and a certain 2015 Oscar contender in multiple categories.