AVClub: More than any other director currently working, with the possible exception of Terrence Malick, Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino conceives his films musically, working with motifs and movements as much as he does with traditional scenes. So it’s no surprise that his latest effort, Youth, is about a famous conductor whose best friend is a famous film director, no less, thereby splitting the difference. Making his second film in English, following 2011’s exceedingly eccentric This Must Be The Place (starring Sean Penn as The Cure’s Robert Smith, more or less), Sorrentino still mostly refuses to compromise. Youth is slightly less garish and bombastic than his Italian pictures (which include The Great Beauty and Il Divo), but it’s no less free-associative, building meaning from juxtapositions that feel largely intuitive. If you’re on Sorrentino’s wavelength, that can feel liberating. If not, “oppressive” might be a better word.
Youth, Beautiful Movie Visually Captivating Paolo Sorrentino.
Maybe the biggest success of Flavors of Youth is the way the wistfulness of each short remains different. There are at least some romance and love in all three, and each provides its own unique memory-soaked longings.
THR
Feng Xiaogang's period drama charts the turbulent relationships among members of a Chinese military performance troupe from the 1970s to the 1990s.
