Flicks, Matt Glasby
Writer/director Paolo Sorrentino makes big, brassy films about all things Italian – not for everyone, or every mood – but his latest effort won this year's Best Foreign Language Oscar, so he's doing something right.
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The Great Beauty
A portrait of Rome, this Italian drama from Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo) tells the story of an aging writer in the midst of an existential crisis. Winner of Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes 2014 and nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2013. Says the Guardian: "It is in the classic high Italian style of Fellini's La Dolce Vita... The grande bellezza [the film's title in Italian] can mean love, or sex, or art, or death, but most of all it here means Rome, and the movie wants to drown itself in Rome's fathomless depths of history and worldliness."
Aristocratic ladies, social climbers, politicians, high-flying criminals, journalists, actors, decadent nobles, prelates, artists and intellectuals - whether authentic or presumed - form a network of flaky relationships, all engulfed in a desperate Babylon which plays out in the antique palaces, villas and terraces in Rome. Jep Gambardella, 65 - indolent, disenchanted, his eyes permanently imbued with gin and tonic - watches this parade of humanity.
Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs and Golden Globes 2014
2013Rating: M, Nudity142 minsItaly, FranceItalian with English subtitles
ComedyDramaWorld Cinema
- Director:
- Paolo Sorrentino ('This Must Be the Place', 'Il Dive', 'The Family Friend')
- Writer:
- Paolo SorrentinoUmberto Contarello
- Cast:
- Toni ServilloCarlo VerdoneSabrina FerilliCarlo Buccirosso
The Great Beauty / Reviews
Variety
Rome in all its splendor and superficiality, artifice and significance, becomes an enormous banquet too rich to digest in one sitting.
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The New Yorker
Look no further... if you wish to know whether, where, and in what guise the spirit of Fellini remains at work-and, better still, at play.
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The New York Times
A deliriously alive movie... the story of a man, a city, a country and a cinema, though not necessarily in that order.
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The Guardian
As always, Sorrentino has an architectural eye, his cameras panning over crumbling buildings, unclothed bodies and (most importantly) Servillo's face with enraptured awe.
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Hollywood Reporter
Referencing without imitating Fellini, Sorrentino offers an amusing update on Italian society at the end of a cycle.
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Empire Magazine
Sumptuous and self-indulgent, Sorrentino's latest is a Fellini-like feast for the eyes.
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