Youth movie review & film summary (2015)

In this way, Sorrentino allows viewers to enjoy Fred's cynical outlook without necessarily having to see the reason of it. He spends his days wondering if he'll take a piss, struggling to remember if he slept with a high school sweetheart, and watching everybody mess up around him. Characters state their gripes, their self-absorbed observations, and their thunderous pronouncements.

But few individual scenes feel like definitive, self-serious authorial testaments. These are the stray thoughts of characters on holiday, no matter how self-important, nor how frank. After all, how can one agree or disagree with Fred when he opines that "Levity is a perversion," or that "All left-handed people are irregular"? More often than not, "Youth" rejects the notion that all metaphors are created equally, like when Fred rolls his eyes at Mick and facetiously praises him for being "quite the magician of metaphor." More often than not, people talk in "Youth" for the sake of hearing themselves think.

This leaves much of the film's heavy-lifting in the hands of its capable cast, and Luca Bigazzi, Sorrentino's regular cinematographer. You have to feel the emotion in Caine's quavering voice, sullen facial expression, and placid body language to fully appreciate Fred's meaning when he says he composed his music "while I yet loved." Sorrentino is a dedicated (albeit ostentatious) sensualist, so the meaning of his images are inscribed on their surface. Weisz and Jane Fonda, who plays a weary, but brutally honest former colleague of Mick's, go far with dialogue-driven scenes.

But more often than not, "Youth" resonates because of Sorrentino and Bigazzi's typically fruitful collaboration. They invest a romantic, playful melancholy in their film's idyllic, secluded Swiss location, which allows their cast the freedom to disappear, wander, or pace about their characters' lavishly-realized set as if it were an elaborate menagerie. Their characters similarly circle profundity, but never quite own it.

And at some point, every character in "Youth" falls out of love with the way of seeing the world. That kind of anti-epiphany is major—not on a universal, but rather a personal scale. People age, lust after youth and try to become comfortable with their own vanities, and shortcomings. "Youth" charms you by simply acknowledging that saying something profound is just another stage in the never-ending process of finding meaning in everyday life.

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