A grand portrait of desire for youth and its rather shallow, inconsequential nature





IMDb Ratings : 7.8

Genre: Drama

Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Kietel, Rachel Weisz

Country: Italy | France | Switzerland | UK

Runtime: 118 min

Set up in the grandest tradition of majestic Italian cinema in the footfall of the maestros Fellini , Bertolucci and Rosselini, Sorrento weaves us a magical tapestry of pining for youth. In this film, both the pining for youth and youth itself stand facing each other. The pining and the reality stare each other in the face and often question and tease each other.

Youth is very similar stylistically to Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning film ‘ The Great Beauty ' which also revolved around the trial and tribulations of an ageing man who lived in the spotlight. Sorrentino’s operatic and stylized treatment of his work has become synonymous with his films and this film treats on the same ground with exuberance and flourish in its style.

Fred and Mick are vacationing in a Swiss medspa with Leda (Rachel Weissz) who is Fred’s daughter. Leda has just been let go by her husband—Mick’s son for a woman ‘who is better in bed’. And then we have the rest of the ensemble cast in the hotel—a young actor (Paul Dano) prepping for his next role, a completely out of shape football star (Maradonna, anyone?) and the reigning Miss Universe who is given a free stay at the hotel as part of a bag of goodies for winning the crown.

Caine as Fred has been asked to play one of his significant pieces—one of his earlier masterpieces ‘Simple Songs’ for the Queen of England but he refuses because he wrote it only for his wife. She can perform no more. So he turns down the Queen’s invitation.

He starts questioning Keitel’s involvement with a girl named Gilda whom they were both fond of as youngsters. Never mind that they are both now nearing eighty and discussions of teenage intimacy are beyond any relevance. He just has to know whether Keitel got to have a more intimate relationship with Gilda. It just bothers him and stays fixed in his mind. The nostalgia for youth and his constant quest to find the most invisible moments that ever existed leads him to constantly meander through obtuse territories of teenage love, early marital love, virility, alertness, and, yes finally bodily functions. At every step of the way, he is a pained soul who lives completely in the present and hopes to find the past in it. His is a disillusioned face breaking into a taciturn smile, grandfatherly in his approach and almost always serenely happy when he encounters a young beauty. Subliminal he is every passing moment.

And then the imagery and visions start… into a Fellini-like world we enter—the symmetrical elderlies in the hot tub and sauna, the sensuous masseuse in her abundance, the solarized images of old male guests getting young girls or the lack thereof, the Miss Universe catching all unaware by her nudity, the failing football star practicing football with a tennis ball… the list goes on into the territory of the freak and the bizarre as just as a grand Italian maestro could do. And the relentless music score that just about levitates every freak visual to the extreme.

And then the imagery and visions start… into a Fellini-like world we enter—the symmetrical elderlies in the hot tub and sauna, the sensuous masseuse in her abundance, the solarized images of old male guests getting young girls or the lack thereof, the Miss Universe catching all unaware by her nudity, the failing football star practicing football with a tennis ball… the list goes on into the territory of the freak and the bizarre as just as a grand Italian maestro could do. And the relentless music score that just about levitates every freak visual to the extreme.

Keitel’s character seems to be more laidback and just a tad confused. He is writing a film with a new cast of scriptwriters who are all young bumbling idiots. But everything falls apart when Hollywood diva Brenda (Jane Fonda) visits him and tells him that she cannot act in his films and gives her monologue about the state of Hollywood. Sorrentino pegs the monologue in a surreal, exaggerated and fantastic manner albeit with some truth.

Sorrentino plays in a mindscape, which juxtaposes desire versus the real deal. The real deal of youth is raw beauty but it is shallow and inconsequential. After all the hype of the Miss Universe arriving, she gets a full frontal nudity shot and is then almost banished from the film. The young actor is good company but he is more spent and tired than the old ones, the young lovers are still trying to outdo each other in the department of amour. Sorrentino keeps revisiting the masseuse in her dance studio where she is more style than substance. The sudden visions of youth are angular, jarring and grotesque… the swooping camera shots add to the allure… what plays on in Caine’s mind is just some fragments of a flight of fancy.