Well acted and beautiful in places but overstays its welcome by about half an hour of padding

Rating: 6/10 (22 November 2015)

Youth could not be more European if the Eiffel Tower itself was in the background of every shot. It has much the same vibe of Michel Haneke's Amour, in that it contains many moments of beauty and passion in an excessively long and glacially paced film.
I give Michael Caine a lot of flack for cashing pay cheques and playing himself in everything, but there was something nice about his performance in Youth that made his Oscar buzz warranted. He plays Ballinger as cold, distant and guarded but when the chinks in his armour are exposed with a rare smile or an involuntary laugh, its beautifully genuine. He brings out the best of Paolo Sorrentino's writing in a beautifully heartbreaking (and Oscar-worthy) scene where he tells the Queen's envoy the reason he will not perform his songs for her. Rachel Weisz as Ballinger's recently dumped daughter, and Weisz delivers the film's finest monologue about what a distant man Ballinger was growing up. Its a worthy Oscar-scene of her own, and it sets up the aforementioned Caine scene beautifully. Alex Macqueen pops in and out as the Queen's emissary and does a wonderful job, almost comedically frustrated by the old, guarded Ballinger.
Youth's other plot involves Harvey Keitel's Mick Boyle, an American writer/director who is writing his testament. It takes a while for Keitel to get anything to do, but when Jane Fonda's Brenda (his long time corroborating actress) turns up to talk about his upcoming film, both of them shine. Jane Fonda clocks in at no more than seven minutes of screen time, but she owns every single second. I'm firmly against Oscars for such tiny parts, but I'm glad everyone is raving about her.
Paul Dano rounds out the cast as Jimmy Tree, a "Birdman" style actor who is only recognised for one robot part he did early in his career. I love Dano and the film could've used more of him, but at the same time I would have been happier if the story they actually gave him cut off at the conversation he had with Miss Universe. Its a thoughtful piece of writing that shows us not to underestimate people we only know for one flashy performance. Then we get the cliché fan who does actually recognise him from something else, then a bizarre crises and then the film ends for him.
Sorrentino's direction is beautiful, and there's more than a few well written moments especially towards the end. Where Youth goes off the rails is the fact that it takes two hours to tell a story that could've been told in one and a half. I could've done without Weisz's entire subplot (make her visiting for the week, instead of divorced, so we don't have to deal with her love story), the bizarre turn Dano takes, and minutes upon minutes of filler long shots, especially one jarring scene in which Weisz retells Keitel the best scene in the film. We all saw it, just because in real life people would tell each other doesn't mean we need to watch them telling! The whole second hour of Youth felt overstayed and honestly, there are only three scenes in Youth I'd be recommending or watching again.