The Great Beauty

Sorrentino's heady, vivid yet wearily melancholic musing on midlife crisis submerges you in sumptuousness until you emerge, blinking, as if from some impossibly glamorous party.

Wild set-pieces and rueful observations are the stock in trade of this Italian film by one of the modern masters of cinema, Paolo Sorrentino.

I can't remember when a film last gave me such a surge of pure pleasure -- no, outright euphoria -- as The Great Beauty.

The Great Beauty is an utterly ravishing portrait of listless luxuriance, a fantasy of decadent wealth and beauty that evokes Fellini's La Dolce Vita by way of Baz Luhrmann.

Celebrating Rome in all its decay, this florid comedy by Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo, This Must Be the Place) opens with a hyperbolically gaudy party honoring a celebrity journalist on his 65th birthday.

A riotous film that finds depth, clarity and refreshment in even the shallowest of pools.

It would be a disservice to consider this generous film a mere homage. [Full review in Spanish]

If the film is a reflection of the Bellusconi bunga-bunga era and its hollowness, that's fine too. It still retains that melancholy and sadness and silence and thoughtfulness against that super stylized, slick, camera moves and gyrating, young bodies.

The Great Beauty is a cinematic marvel that playfully asks what we find truly joyous in life and questions their validity with a sardonic over exuberance.

Watching the enriching aesthetic of this film and witnessing its exuberant visual style is something that is priceless. [Full review in Spanish]