"Youth"

Rating: 7/10 (2 November 2015)

« Youth » is a complex drama by Paolo Sorrentino about Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), a retired orchestra conductor, who is on holiday with his friend Mick Boyle(Harvey Keitel), a film director, in a luxury hotel in Switzerland for stars and famous people in the show business. We watch them as Fred, who is asked by one of the Queen of England's emissary to perform again despite refusing to do so ever again, is trying to deal with his daughter and wife's issues and as Mick is trying to write what will be his last important film.
I don't really know if I have enjoyed it or not, as it was sometimes quite hard to understand as well as hard to keep up with what was going on as there was also a sub-plot developing. However, I liked that the film included many incidents relating to the pair, including Fred's daughter (who is married to Mick's son) splitting from her husband, as it allowed us to get a well-rounded view of the characters' personalities as they responded to each incident. I also liked the fact that it was giving us a glimpse on how you feel when you get old and you feel like you've done everything you could have possibly done in your life. As the main they do in the film is talk, it gives us a better understanding of how they are working through their situations and it allows more characters to wander in and out of the story. Although there were some moments of complicity between the women portrayed in this film and the main characters, I didn't enjoy how they were pictured as either needing men in their life to be successful and as being incapable of being independent or just being beautiful but therefore being stupid.
I'd recommend the film to perhaps an older generation who can more closely relate with such a story. As a teenager, I was sometimes confused with the different directions the film was taking and the different stories the characters were introducing, perhaps as I haven't had the opportunity to live some of the experiences that the characters discuss. Overall however, the film was compelling and nicely integrated the plots well, creating an emotional, 'overwhelming' film.