a costume drama about old age

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2015)

"Youth" is a movie about age: lots of words are spent about being old, and you must eventually assume that the title of the movie is defined by exclusion. Most of interactions are between couples (friend with friend, father with daughter) whose talks very rarely sound like actual talks, and very often look like monologues. Not strange at all, anyway, as a third important subject (a.k.a. the audience) is always present – so the talking is basically for us. People that complain with Sorrentino for these kind of things just don't understand what the man is trying to do: yeah, his characters looks like they have written words in front of them and are taking turns to deliver their own, but, guess what, this is a perfect definition for the term "acting in a movie". Peace.
Michael Caine shines in the leading role, in his usual soft-spoken and controlled fashion. He is surrounded but two magnificent counterparts, the old (but young inside) Harvey Keitel and the young (but old inside) world famous actor portrayed by Paul Dano. These characters allow us to see how, never mind the age, you are just as much young as you want to be (the word "Youth" is possibly used in this movie as an alternate definition of "Life": you can be a youngster of 10, 30 of 70 years old, as long as you keep on learning from your mistakes). Harvey Keitel gets a very rare chance to star in the role of an intellectual, a director who's writing his "testament". He has a real great cinema-moment (the women of his movie life, reunited in a dreamy swiss panorama, halfway between Fellini 8 1/2 and Nuovo Cinema Paradiso ending montage), and provides energy and credibility to a character who's not entirely able to come to terms with his life (which is what Michael Caine eventually accomplish): as life is what it is, of course, but life is all there is - of course.
I would have skipped the final sequence with the concert: you can't keep on talking about a great piece of art for the whole movie, and then make the big mistake of trying to show it, as such great expectations are easy to be failed. But anyway I liked the strange unreal feeling of this movie, his peculiar setting and choice of characters, their detached reflections about life: it looks like a fantasy movie, or a ghosts story. I believe that it can be enjoyed by anybody, despite the age, regardless of the stage of "Youth" you currently are or feel in.