Youth (La Giovinezza), by Paolo Sorrentino (2025)

Brief note of love: this is an atempt of writing film reviews in english. I’m used to write in portuguese, but I’m trying to improve my language skills. You can find in portuguese at Café: extra-forte.

Paolo Sorrentino is an author. He makes art film. On this assumption, you can not go to the movies expecting to find a romantic comedy or a simple narrative drama that is easy to grasp. Therefore, we need to enter in a mindset of special films, those that require us calm, attentive and willing, which can be seen as an intriguing program or its extreme opposite, and almost always the first option is true.

‘La Giovinezza’ is two hours and four minutes long and I confess, it seems to be longer. At one point, you think you’re at the end, but you are still waiting for another 20 minutes of a story that apparently goes back to a previous narrative path that was closed but asked for an addendum. At the same time, it is a film that does not leave your mind. Once seen, it remains in us being digested gradually, in the course of one or more days. The scenario and Luca Bigazzi’s photography favors once again — as in ‘La Grande Bellezza’ — this seduction. We are powerless victims, attracted by a net of large plastic images and contrasts, not only as the result of the location being a luxury spa in Switzerland, but also for their frameworks, camera positions, and especially characters with their costumes built to cause maximum impact from little subtlety in an almost surreal environment.

Michael Caine is Fred Ballinger, a pessimist retired teacher who receives a proposal of Queen Elisabeth II to present his compositions on the birthday of Prince Philip. His character, alone, worth the whole movie. The complex construction of a pained and conscious man, bitter and endowed with an extraordinary humor that isn’t goofy, takes us on quiet and precise dialogues. Michael Caine is one of the great actors of his time and here he shows us, once again, his grandeur. In fact, the work of the ensemble in this film is, again, confirming the quality of Sorrentino’s work. Just remember ‘Here is my place’ (2011), with a transformed Sean Penn and in ‘La Grande Bellezza’ (2013), whose parallel with this ‘La Giovinezza’ is even stronger. Their protagonists look alike and we could almost think that Toni Sevillo (Jep Gambardella from Bellezza) would be the actor for this new production, but perhaps his persona did not match so much with this refined apathy, but a more cynical mood and acid ferformed by Caine.

Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) is Fred’s friend and film director in decadence whose funding for his next film depends on the participation of Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda, extraordinary, referring to a Marisa Paredes deprecated). They spend days together while Fred attends the activities of the spa and is divided between the queen’s emissary visits — in cynical and amusing scenes — visits to the doctor for routine checkups, her daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) in crisis and conversations with the other, Mick, who writes with his crew the script whose last scene is the end of a love overcome by death and neglect, never seems satisfactory. Paul Dano is Jimmy Tree, an actor who accompanies the life in the spa while preparing for a major role in a new production, observes the guests and participates in cynicism and discussions with Mick and Fred. Jimmy is the antithesis of youth except for his vanity, putting in the same time with the other two, sees life as this sequence of events that culminates always in apathy, until his own transformation.

If in ‘La Grande Bellezza’ we see a classical Rome, rich and decadent in a travelling camera with Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a writer of a one and only book living a senior camouflaged boredom between luxurious parties and empty friends, in ‘Giovinezza’ the same feeling reemerges with force, but in contrast to the youth and their dilemmas, neuroses and tiredness, hopelessness of a comfortable old age. Michael Caine shapes this complex and cynical character, not only for the mockery and more to accept the life that he lives today, with no big surprises. His visits to the doctor never imply a death foretold and this is part of a frustration, as if only he lacked it. At the same time, the Miss Universe comes suddenly to the spa and crosses paths with our characters breaking the classical concept of the beautiful and stupid woman, in a discussion that surprises everyone. With Lena’s tears, is is the maximum of emotion that we will find here, including the glimpse of a perfect body, seen in the movie poster.

In addition to telling the story of a particular group where little action happens in a drama, there is a much more interesting and symbolic subtext, that we digest over the days. The transformation of the characters, the acceptance for who they are and where they will end — at any age — is the force and break with this youth of certainties, goals and dreams. There is no much more to accomplish than the limit of each individual and this is hard and difficult for them to grasp. Jimmy Tree expresses that more clearer in his speech break. Far more interesting is to realize that the dilemma concerns everyone and each character manifests it in a different way, with an equally distinct result. That goes for both protagonists and extras. It is a film to be revisited, it gives the impression that its layers need more attention, calmer and more reflection than that first one, which is usually the curiosity look, trying to embrace the whole. A second glance is like reading the same book again and then took its nuances and best sentences.

There are a few phrases and scenes in my head, as huge, brilliantly conducted and written as only an experienced, intelligent and sensitive director / writer could. With references and a clear homage to Fellini — I still think Michael Caine / Fred Ballinger and Toni Servillo / Jep Gambardella are somewhat like Mastroianni’s flaneur of that Italian director — we highlight its luxury exaggerations and eventual sequences that brings Fellini back to our memory. There is brutal aesthetic care that distinguishes these productions from those of other countries. The best known Italian films take up this issue and invariably take the blow with its vivid colors and intense characters, always with some striking feature, even it is apathy. Spoken in English, with no Italian actors and filmed in Switzerland, the author persists in its clear and classical references to its origins and does it very well. I came back to its ‘extra’ twenty minutes addendum to secure them as fundamental, contradicting a first perception to mentally reediting sequences that before I would rapidly say as sufficient to an end. If the visual impact of ‘La Grande Bellezza’ surprises and binds us in each scene, this ‘Giovinezza’ we are caught off guard, it seems that we are in control of what we see and then the film suddenly dominates us, ghosts of the scenes that we have seen run through our minds, with its dialogues and silences and for hours on end. The team of actors and their unusual extras deserves it all, his awards and laurels. It will not be easy to watch, but it will be intriguing.