Film review: The Great Beauty is a humanistic movie with Felliniesque touches

The Great Beauty
Starring: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Category: IIB (Italian)

Life is so fleeting, you may as well savour every moment. That message seeps from every hypnotic scene of The Great Beauty, this year's best foreign language film Oscar winner. Italian director Paolo Sorrentino ( This Must Be the Place) takes this notion so literally that he even makes a contemporary flâneur his protagonist.

Jep Gambardella is a jaded writer who lives in the shadow of the success of his only novel, The Human Apparatus, which was published some four decades ago. Charismatically played by Toni Servillo, who also starred in Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love (2004) and Il Divo (2008), the man is a walking reminder of his own unrealised promise.

He is now an elegant wreck, like much of the Roman landscape which surrounds him. But when we first meet this perfectly attired character, he seems to be fine: he's enjoying himself at his 65th birthday party, amidst the throbbing music and writhing bodies. Living just across from the Colosseum, he has been a fixture of the city's high society since his arrival at the age of 26.

In truth, existence rings hollow for the self-proclaimed "king of the high life", and he has grown cynical about his hedonistic lifestyle. He occupies himself with frequent walks around the city, regular dinner parties, and an occasional magazine writing gig.

When news arrives that his first love has passed away, his present becomes muddled with memories and regrets. These fuel the flimsy - if emotionally resonant - episodes of The Great Beauty, the title of which refers to the abstract idea of enlightenment Gambardella once looked for.