LA GRANDE BELLEZZA directed by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy, 2013)

Just as Marcello Mastroianni became synonymous with the films of Federico Fellini, Toni Servillo is a perfect match for Paolo Sorrentino.

Following from Le Consequenze dell’amore (2004) and Il Divo (2008) this is the third movie the gifted Neapolitan director has made with this brilliant actor.

The Fellini connections are also obvious both in the richly visual style of filmmaking and, here, with the setting. Yet, although this movie is rooted in similar themes of hedonistic excess, the Rome of La Grande Bellezza is a very different one from La Dolce Vita of 1960.

Servillo plays Jep Gambardella, a 65 year-old journalist who wrote one acclaimed novel in his twenties but nothing of note since. He seems largely content to amble around the city as a wry observer of the high and low cultural scene.

Living it up! The peerless Toni Servillo.

As a youth, he remembers he had the ambition to be not simply a man of the world but the greatest man of the world; to be not simply a party-goer but a party-maker and breaker.

Everyone he meets reminds him of the heights he once reached as a young man and, in one way or another, they all ask what went wrong.

The answer to this question is that his moment of great beauty came when he was 18 with the first true love of his life. We gradually come to realise that he has been searching for an epiphanic experience to match this ever since. As everything falls short,  he has become the thing he most feared: one of life’s participants; a side-show rather than the main attraction.

We see him watching the vacuous lives of those whose conspicuous wealth finances a world dominated by sex, drugs and thumping techno music. The brashness and emptiness of this decadent lifestyle is evident yet is depicted as a desperate celebration of life and vitality rather than as the last gasp of a dying culture.

This is the modern Italy, warts and all.

Jep is like some tragic Shakespearean anti-hero, all too aware that this sound and fury signifies nothing but resigned to the fact that the shallow pursuit of pleasure is perhaps as good as it gets. He observes the superficial revellers with a cynical eye and adds a caustic commentary yet he does so without any deep-rooted bitterness or self-pity.

The perfect couple – Servillo and Sorrentino

We can recognise that the looming shadow of mortality he walks under is one that falls over us all sooner or later. He is increasingly aware that he is nearing the end of his life; “I feel old”, he tells Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli), the ill-fated daughter of a bordello manager; “Well, you’re not young“, she replies bluntly.

Sorrentino’s movie has already been greeted with justifiable acclaim at this year’s Cannes festival. It is extravagant, self-indulgent and visually exuberant – the work of an auteur with a highly individual cinematic eye and the boldness to combine surrealism with hyper-realìsm.

The satirical depiction of the Catholic church seemed a little forced to me but the movie brilliantly evokes the contrast between the timeless beauty of Rome, the eternal city,  and the transient excesses of some of its well-heeled inhabitants.

The combination of the best living Italian director with the country’s best living actor makes La Grande Bellezza a win-win ticket that ought to see this movie become a major international success