'The Great Beauty'. A film starring Tony Seville. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino. In Italian with English subtitles.
Suppose you want to do a film about Rome. 'The eternal city' someone called Rome. Maybe it is or was. It was founded by twins Romulus and Remus, who mythology says were suckled by a goat. Then Rome was the headquarters of the Roman Empire.N ow the Pope rules over more than a billion Catholics from Rome and his headquarters in the Vatican City.
If you're director Paolo Sorrentino you're influenced by the late Federico Fellini. So you cast Jep Gambardella as an ageing writer. For him Rome is a place of beauty. His balcony looks out onto the Colosseum. The film takes us to modern art shows, old sculptures and paintings and memories of a young woman. This is a woman who Jep Gambardella (Tony Seville) loved but never married.
"Everything around me is dying," he says to his tiny editor. It's true but he and his intellectural friends still keep on smoking cigarettes, drinking, talking and making love.
Director Sorrentino doesn't serve up much of a plot. Along the way he takes digs at the Italian Communist Party, well at least some political party and the Catholic church. An ageing cardinal talks endlessly about his cooking skills. A 104 year old saint based on maybe the late Mother Teresa can barely talk. A critic out of Fellini's '8 and 1/2' looks for deep meanings in art works. Then there's an abusive author of 11 novels who clashes with Gambardella who's only written one novelette in his entire life.
If you want to go on a tour of Rome and its beautiful touristy places, 'The Great Beauty' is a film you'll like. "At my age a great beauty isn't enough' Gambardella says. So Rome will fit the bill for him and other old people too.
Anyway at movie's end, Jep's planning to write another novel after a break of 40 years. Who knows? Maybe he'll pull it off. After all, in the eternal city, hope often springs eternal..
