“LA GRANDE BELLEZZA” ****
Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s new film is a delightful experience in the shape of a nostalgic trip into the dreamy allegoric world of master Federico Fellini. This brilliant comedy of manners depicts vanity, luxury and the high anxieties of Rome’s bohemian High Society with sophisticated cynicism, and it seems to be a contemplative modern take on “La Dolce Vita”, one of the greatest and most sensual films ever made, and Fellini’s most popular masterpiece. Sorrentino presents an astonishing balanced style, and determination with the material, moving forward on his brilliant career. With the support of great professionals working with him, Sorrentino has been creating promising visual techniques. His most important collaborator is definitely photographer Lucca Bigazzi, who is an extraordinary professional enthralling viewers through the angles he envisions. For this piece, Bigazzi comprehends the need of love, passion and glamour described in Sorrentino’s allegory of fame and decadence, inviting the audience to experience splendorous images of fascinating explosive beauty, for the city, the bohemian characters, the luxury, the pleasures and vices and their distinguished behaviors.
The narrative follows Jep Gambardella(Toni Servillo), a respected and bon-vivant writer who prefers to enjoy his bohemian habits among his strange friends rather than to dedicate himself on a new novel. While everyone is pressuring him to come up with a new idea, he’s looking back into the past, contemplating his most unforgettable experiences, and also trying to get used to modernity and settle down. His truthfulness may hurt or offend people around him especially when he decides not to waste time anymore with things he doesn’t want to do, and sometimes describing his friends’ lowest characteristics to their faces.
Toni Servillo gives a terrific performance expressing his emotions with respectful acting nuances. He’s able to dive into all the details of his personality through each topic of the story (loneliness, failure, success, struggle), but keeping a vivacious attitude that never lets him down. Through his encounters with old pals, artists, lovers, celebrities and authorities, Sorrentino paints a dazzling and entertaining postcard of Rome, creating a well spirited love letter to the city, its irresistible characteristics, shapes, curves and landscapes. Bigazzi’s lens are so luminous and shiny that makes one fall in love just for looking at such greatness and continuous pleasurable shots.
The depiction on the bourgeois lifestyle through the secondary characters as eccentric as it gets, is a plus on this Italian debauchery, making it a warm and visually astonishing experience inside the dark room. Gotta Love the Big Screen. Happy Thanksgiving!
DVD: THE DEFLOWERING OF EVA VAN END
The arrival of a German student in an exchanging program brings a family to their terms. His presence will shake everyone, from the young daughter looking for her first love experience, to the father who’s caught up in a money-scam and the mother who’s introduced to meditation. The atmosphere of social issues, makes it an interesting, sensible and sometimes darkly funny story of a dysfunctional family. Highly recommended. Available on DVD www.filmmovement.com
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