leplatypus
Ordinary, i really like Sabrina movies as unlike la Bellucci, she stays close to her roots and plays everyday women. But this time, her choice is different and i found this movie totally awful ! It's the same elitist and empty stinker you can find in some American movies (Allen), or french cinema (Ozon). It's about the lives of the wealthy privileged, who doesn't really work, who think socialite life is the best occupation of the world: in spite of their art shows, beautiful mansions, vacations, wardrobes, they are mindless, soulless, heartless to just achieve desire for money and sex ! Those people verify my belief that the upper you are, the less you got values ! Maybe the sets are beautiful because Italy is an old country with a famous heritage but 140 minutes among those ghouls are just excruciating for me, even with Sabrina, playing a meaningless stripper at 51 years old ! What a decadence !
bsw-26149
What a beautiful film. As has been written in other reviews, the themes of this movie are quite simple actually: getting old, the difficulty of appreciating the day-to-day, overcoming cynicism and all the beauty that we become numb to. What stands out is the unexpected choices Sorrentino makes in his direction. The ancient saint sitting atop a throne kissing the hands of assorted religious leaders as they approach one by one, only to kick off her right shoe like a little child. The CGI giraffe whose presence in the scene is a 40-foot underscoring of an important point. The blood on the head of an artist who runs headfirst into a wall, to the bemused and bored delight of the high-society crowd.This movie is as classically beautiful as any, but it is not content to stop there, always taking one step further, one risk more, and always in the most unexpected of ways.Highly recommended.
zanmorrow
I try to watch the foreign language film winners and have seen some very moving films. But this was just too languid for me. Rome looks beautiful but the people within it in this film aren't really happy and quite dismissive of it. Jep is the protagonist, a party animal who realises at age 65 his life has been quite wasted after becoming famous for one small novel written decades ago. He does interviews for newspapers and his editor is the only sympathetic character in the novel. The rest rely on drugs, sex, clothes, parties to give them satisfaction. This could make a good film but Jeb just wanders around getting sadder and sadder. Friends leave Rome, die, suffer despair. The film has some nice surreal dream sequences and beautiful views, gorgeous rooms. Sitting under the stars at night in an outdoor sitting room with sofas, tables and lights looks divine but that's the on,y bit of this film that reached me.
zika-84755
I started to watch it without any high expectations but the film truly surprised me. Deep,sophisticated, intelligent, full of meaning, every frame on point. This film is a real piece of art, high-end product of cinema, an aesthetic pleasure. The mere watching and listening to the sheer beauty of the succession of images and conversations will bring an emotional dreamer like me to tears because of sweet, almost physical ache. The thing is that the plot doesn't matter that much, it is not the main focus. One just drowns in your own thoughts and emotions the film creates. I remained captured by it until the last minute and a long time after watching it. For those who find it boring - this is not your typical flick that will entertain you the way you are used to. It is not in any sense a crowd pleaser.
AD
