Youth – first look review

Pao­lo Sor­renti­no com­pos­es images that are ele­gant­ly wacky and imbued with melan­choly. Youth boasts an epic haul of these expen­sive-look­ing baubles. Retired com­pos­er Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) has gone to a lux­u­ry Alpine resort to take stock of what has been and to won­der if there’s any­where left to go next. Among his fel­low res­i­dents are many famous celebri­ties, includ­ing his old­est friend, respect­ed art-house film direc­tor, Mick (Har­vey Kei­t­el). Their con­ver­sa­tions pro­vide con­ti­nu­ity and colour the themes of their iso­lat­ed Swiss set­ting, evok­ing Olivi­er Assayas’ recent Clouds of Sils Maria if the char­ac­ters had acci­den­tal­ly checked into a ren­o­vat­ed Grand Budapest Hotel.

So vivid and star­tling are the tableaux cap­tured by a glid­ing cam­era that it’s often hard to see any­thing oth­er than high-impact visu­al gim­mick­ry. Mere hours after its first press screen­ing, Youth is already divid­ing crit­ics. The film is open to the type of crit­i­cism that Ter­rence Mal­ick rou­tine­ly receives (you know the one about glo­ri­ous cin­e­matog­ra­phy and paper-thin sto­ry). As with Malick’s most recent work, this film will shape itself accord­ing to what the view­er brings to it. Mus­ings are scat­tered light­ly across a serene­ly tem­poed series of vignettes, where they can be exam­ined for pro­fun­di­ty or dis­missed as trite.

For this writer, there is a pal­pa­ble atmos­phere to the film, a sense that Fred has entered his end days. He is a calmer char­ac­ter than The Great Beauty’s Jep Gam­bardel­la, in part because life is no longer some­thing that he’s steer­ing. There are a few moments when it seems like the Alpine resort and all that dwell with­in are the last mem­o­ries of a man decid­ing whether or not to trav­el towards the white light. But this is fan­cy con­jured by mood. Fred is as healthy as a horse. He’s just become apa­thet­ic or maybe just giv­en in to what was always there.

When his fresh­ly jilt­ed daughter/​assistant Lena (Rachel Weisz) deliv­ers a rant about his father­ing fail­ures, he takes it qui­et­ly. They are both lying on mas­sage tables. The rou­tine plea­sure ser­vices of the resort define the rhythm of life and the leit­mo­tifs of the film. There are night­ly per­for­mances. A chanteuse singing ​‘You’ve Got the Love’ on a spin­ning podi­um forms the first scene, blur­ring fig­ures danc­ing in the back­ground. In the days, women in white admin­is­ter phys­i­cal relief. A rip­pling swim­ming pool dou­bles as a social hub. Among the oth­er guests are an obese ex-foot­baller with a Karl Marx tat­too on his back, a silent cou­ple, the cur­rent Miss Uni­verse, and an actor with ​‘I’m trav­el­ling incog­ni­to’ facial hair (Paul Dano) who is frus­trat­ed that his seri­ous work has been super­seded in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion by his role as a pop­u­lar robot.

There was con­cern in the build-up to Youth that it would be a remake of The Great Beau­ty, but this time around Sor­renti­no is play­ing his char­ac­ters’ sit­u­a­tion for humour. Again, the jokes are divi­sive, enshroud­ed as they are in a rel­ish for the sur­re­al. Human absur­di­ty and the pre­ten­sions of the art world are prime tar­gets. Palo­ma Faith and Jane Fon­da both have cameos that are so pecu­liar­ly con­trived that they may well as well have escaped from the dream sequences. Meta-tex­tu­al com­ments are scat­tered but not rail­road­ed into being. Frank is at the resort to fin­ish writ­ing his next film. He and his col­lab­o­ra­tors strug­gle with find­ing an end­ing. As they pitch options, shoot­ing each oth­er down, Sor­renti­no makes us won­der how this film will end. And how the end will be.

Mean­while Fred strolls through this world reflect­ing on his absent wife and fend­ing off a Roy­al request to come out of retire­ment. By mak­ing Fred’s sur­round­ings at this pon­der­ous time so splen­did and strange, Sor­renti­no puts the case for his lead char­ac­ter to keep on keep­ing on. When all the whim­si­cal tan­gents have fin­ished run­ning riot, a life­force that is as gen­tle as a masseuse’s fin­ger­tips con­tin­ues to press.