CAPSULE: Youth (2015, Dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

I released my top ten films a little early this year. I was pretty sure it was all locked in by then. There were only two films that had my finger hovering over the publish button. Both were from directors who had ranked high in my top ten two years ago. Critical opinion hadn't been ecstatic for either film so I went ahead and set it free. To be on the safe side, though, I caught both films on the last day of the year.

Suffice to say, neither impressed. Not the best end to the cinema-going year but saves me from having to redo my list.

Of the two films, Paolo Sorrentino's Youth was the most disappointing. Both films reinforced for me the importance of connection, but it was this one that proved how far wrong it could go if you aren't jumping on the director's wavelength. I struggled to comprehend the haters of Sorrentino's Oscar winning The Great Beauty. They complained about its artifice, its shallowness, which I saw as its primary strength. Sorrentino managed to both critique and celebrate our sacred cows - art, religion, intelligentsia. Here he is again expansively reviewing our obsession with fame, age and creation, but without the critical eye. Or, I should add, any real focus.

Youth, for me, was the film that many had described The Great Beauty was for them: hollow, pompous, uninvolving.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel keep things watchable. They are solid enough to wash away the bad taste of a woefully miscast Paul Dano. Plus, Jane Fonda puts in a diverting cameo. It's scenery chewing stuff for the most part though and consistently undercut by Sorrentino's unevenly paced, unnecessarily purvy screenplay (that scene of Miss Universe slipping into the spa is quite the nadir).

Basically, Youth just doesn't go anywhere and has nothing much to say while doing it.

Disappointing.

★★

Trailer: