Review | Film review: Youth – Michael Caine plays bitter widower in Paolo Sorrentino’s symphonic tale
The director serves up a perfect cinematic cocktail – dizzying and dazzling – in a rumination on ageing
Fresh off his Oscar win for The Great Beauty , Paolo Sorrentino is back with Youth, a surreal meditation on the ageing process that returns him to English-language filmmaking: the Italian’s only previous foray into English was 2011’s curious This Must Be the Place, a not entirely successful US road movie with Sean Penn.
This is a more sedate European affair, starring Michael Caine as Fred Ballinger, a retired composer now seeking respite in a luxurious Swiss spa resort. At the outset, Ballinger is approached by an emissary of Queen Elizabeth II to play his most famous composition, Simple Songs, at a concert.
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This being Sorrentino, the film has an almost symphonic feel; images and music are perfectly choreographed (you suspect the Italian a much better conductor than his character). Compared to The Great Beauty and Sorrentino’s earlier film Il Divo, the style is more languid, less frenetic, in keeping with the theme of life ebbing away.
As the camera lingers on the melancholic Caine, the actor offers up one of the more soulful performances of his career. With fine support from Paul Dano and Jane Fonda, it’s a perfect cinematic cocktail – dizzying and dazzling.
Youth opens on March 17
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