Great Beauty, The

Italy 2013, 135 minutes
Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
In Italian with English subtitles
Rating: [M] Nudity
Genres: Foreign Cinema, Drama

Feat. Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso

“Sumptuous and self-indulgent, Sorrentino's latest is a Fellini-like feast for the eyes.”~Empire

Aroview: This Academy-Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film has dir. Paolo Sorrentino's regular frontman Toni Servillo as an aging Roman journalist whose life of decadence comes under reflection upon his 65th birthday.

It's a visual treatise on modern Rome that payes explicit homage to Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA and the aesthetic beauty of Italy's landscape, ruins and sartorial elegance, though the director's self-conscious style arguably detracts as much as it enhances the intended experience. In exploring the futility of modern life as a theme, its search for meaning is limited by a narrow world-view that the film-maker and his protagonist seem to share.

NZ International Film Festival 2013
Adopt-a-Movie Kindly Adopted by Uri Khein