Film Review: Youth

 

Paolo Sorrentino’s follow up to stunning Oscar winner The Great Beauty sees him direct in English for only the second time following 2011’s This Must Be The Place. Retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is on an extended holiday in the Swiss Alps, accompanied by daughter/PA Lena (Rachael Weisz) and veteran film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel).

Ballinger is suffering from apathy, a fact the audience is reminded of on numerous occasions. His days at the luxurious Swiss resort are spent in contemplation of a life devoted to music; the presence of his devoted daughter a constant reminder of his shortcomings as a parent. His conversations with Boyle, a lifelong friend, provide insight into the core themes of Youth: regret, desire and the psyche of an aging artist. Fellow resident Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano), a young Hollywood actor desperate to shun his popularity for playing a famous robot, suggests that he and Ballinger have the same problem, “We’ve been misunderstood our whole lives because we allowed ourselves to give in, just once, to a little levity.”

The levity in question where Ballinger is concerned is his famous Simple Song, a favourite of Prince Phillip, which a representative from Buckingham Palace desperately tries to persuade the famous composer to come out of retirement for a one-off Royal performance. Coupled with the constant badgering from French publishers for drafts of his memoirs, Ballinger is a man seemingly unconcerned with being remembered.

Sorrentino revisits the themes of The Great Beauty, ostensibly dealing with a similarly aging artist somewhat lost when faced with his own mortality. Whereas Jep Gambardella is constantly questioned about his long-awaited second novel, nothing new is expected from Fred Ballinger; just a written memory of what has already passed, or a repeat performance of his most popular work. It’s filmmaker Boyle that we see striving to create the film he will be remembered for, surrounding himself with a team of young writers to create his “testament” project.

The director’s flair for stunning visuals and flights of absurdism are as present here as in his previous works; the decaying ruins of Rome replaced with the vibrant, mountainous landscapes of Central Europe. Whereas the former acted as a reminder of Gambardella’s aging (the scene in which he observes the innocence of two young children playing in a maze in the shadow of the crumbling Coliseum) is replaced by the contrast of two elderly artists surrounded by the very epitome of nature’s vibrancy. Almost everything around them, from the pre-teen looking masseuse, the presence of Miss World, the cameo from Paloma Faith (as herself, no less) to the spring setting itself screams youthful relevance.

Sorrentino lands several moments of genuine beauty, such as Caine’s Ballinger orchestrating a heard of cows into a bovine symphony and Keitel’s Boyle being confronted by all the leading characters from his career atop a Swiss mountain. But for every one striking visual cue, Youth stumbles with clunky dialogue that serves as its biggest detraction. This could well be a personal thing, but bad dialogue read is always far more forgivable than bad dialogue heard. And whereas some of the on-the-nose (to put it kindly) lines in Youth may have been passable in a subtitled film, hearing them drip from the mouths of Caine, Keitel, Dano et al. betrays a concept suggested, visually at least, to be much more complex. Keitel explains that, “Men, animals, plants – we’re all just extras” in one of the worst examples.

There are far too many instances of similarly clumsy dialogue to make Youth a great film, and enough even to justify some of the negative reviews suggesting it isn’t even a good one. But the brilliant lead performance from Caine, as well as solid contributions from Keitel, Dano, Weisz and Jane Fonda, just about outweigh the heavy-handed verbal exploration of its themes.

The constant comparisons to Fellini may just be as much a backhanded compliment to Sorrentino, a director who clearly favours style over substance. Youth doesn’t match the heights reached in The Great Beauty, neither delivering on its initial premise, nor offering enough of an introspective counterbalance to its visual flights of whimsy. It’s nothing if not a curious beast however and, if you are able to forgive some of its more explicit heavy-handedness, provides some genuine moments of visual brilliance.

Youth is showing in Nottingham cinemas now and will be at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 11 February 2015.

Youth Trailer