THE GREAT BEAUTY Ou LA GRANDE BELLEZZA : Film De Paolo Sorrentino, Toutes Citations 0914626300508/FCC/AJR/2 MAI 13 Mensuel OJD : 132396

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A R me de nOS JO rS ses conversations baroques ses ruminations ameres ITA FRA ,H20 AVEC TO JB ° " bonne* SERl/ll O CARLO ffiDONE I Ecrivain génial et roi des ses aphonsmes cyniques Le metteur en scene observe SABRNAFERILl CARLO mondains, Jep GambardeUa une Italie post Berlusconi en pleine déconfiture raisons 81,0. ROSSO SCENARIO PAOLO i S RRENT U UMBERTO i n a rian publie depuis son culturelle et morale Et e est bien sur tout sauf un RELU) PHOTO LUCA hef-d œuvre », LAppareil hasard si Céline est cite en exergue Comme I auteur 3 I MUSIQUE LELE Pour les retrouvailles "nam, sorti au début du Voyage au bout de (a nuit le cinéaste vomit la EIITELLI PRODUCTION de Paolo Sorrentmo FRANCESCACMA «COLA 4 des annees 70 Désormais médiocrité de ses contempora ns Comme lui il part CIULIAHC DISTRIBUTION PATHLj avec Toni Servillo, sa « muse » inieraeweur star pour au combat avec pour seule arme la suprématie Soit l'association de surdoues un quotidien, lt drague, fait des rencontres et se de son style En I occurrence un cortège de visions italiens la plus explosive depui le duo Fellini-Mastroianni remémore son passe entre deux fêtes dantesques folles d embardées opérât ques et de décrochages sur sa terrasse surplombant la ville sensuels a la fois hante par la litterature et totalement aif r Pour les plans du Colisee Les mouvements de camera virtuoses qui laissent le electnsant sans aucun équivalent dans Le cinema au crépuscule, les souffle courl et les yeux exorbités le sens tétanisant de la Peninsule (scusi Nannil Pour un peu cette balades mélancoliques le long du Tibre .. Depuis combien de du montage pop une pensée se déployant selon un hauteur de vue esthetique ce desespoir crépusculaire temps la Ville eternelle rythme quasi hallucinatoire Des les premiers plans donneraient a La grande be/iezza des allures de n avait-elle pas ete filmée de La grande be//ezza on comprend que e est gagne f lm somme d œuvre testamentaire d un vieux maitre comme ca9 La page This Must Se the Place est tournee I escapade revenu de tout Sauf que le < vieux maitre » en IS' Pour les scènes de fêtes new wave avec Sean Penn n est déjà plus qu un question a 42 ans et pète man lestement la forme survoltees qui vont lomta n souvenir Paolo Sorrentmo est de retour a la exactement comme FeLlin quand il tournait 8 Vi Et si vous donner envie d'aller vous maison en compagnie de son acteur fétiche le génial on pense ici au createur de La dolce vita et d Intervista dégourdir les jambes apres la Ton Sen; Ho pour une nouvelle dérive mentale dans ce n est f nalement pas tant pour le déchaînement projectiolion le cerveau en surchauffe d un homme au so r de bouffon et le défile de saintes de freaks et de putains sa vie Un f Lm jumeau d // oVo7 En partie oui même que parce que Sorrentmo donne I impression si la rage punk qui animait le brûlot du cinéaste d errer seul dans les décombres fumants de lage sur les magouilles de la Démocratie chrétienne est ici d or du cinema italien En cela I est raccord avec tempérée par I empalh e totale de Sorrentino pour son alter ego incarne par Servillo un homme obsède son personnage sorte de mix romain de Salmger et par une chimère un esthète a la recherche de de Bref Easton Ellis écrivain dandy qui vit sur le I idéal msais ssable qui donne son titre au film En bout souvenir d un chef d œuvre écrit I y a quarante ans de course I finira par la trouver et nous avec lui A travers lui ses deambulations mélancoliques « La grande beaute »' Elle est la sous nos yeux FF

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ajoute-t-il dans un soupir Avant de devenir une star de cinema (ce qu'il est réellement en Italie), il s'est impose avec le Teatri Uniti, sorte dc tactory napolitaine qu'il a conçue comme une phalange artistique dans une Italie sinistrée Depuis 1986, date de sa creation, son Teatri Uniti monte des pieces et produit quèlques films avec une seule ambition la qualite « C'est une attitude morale et artistique, affirme-t-il Je ne fais pas du theâtre ou du cinema d'occasion Et même si je veux rester ouvert, même si je cherche a m'adresser aux intellectuels aussi bien qu'a ina propre mere, je ne transige pas sur la qualite Le moteur, c'est le theâtre et les pieces du grand répertoire - Shakespeare, Molière, Tchékhov , qui ne souffrent pas la médiocrité » Le cinema est arrive plus tard « A l'époque, on montait beaucoup de pieces indépendantes et de jeunes auteurs nous ont pousses vers le T Art Je ne cherchais pas a jouer dans les films, maîs quelques-uns ont insiste Un jour, alors que je dirigeais Le Misanthrope a Naples, j'ai vu apparaître un grand type aux che\ eux noirs avec une boucle d'oreille Un scénariste qui voulait mc Acteur et metteur en scène de théâtre. Toni faire lire son scnpt Bon, OK je parcours une page Servillo est devenu à la fois la muse et le ht je suis tombe amoureux du texte » Le type a U boucle d'oreille s'appelle Paolo Sorrentino, le scnpt double de Paolo Sorrentino. La grande beiiezza, L uomo in plu Et si c'était une coïncidence que en compétition à Cannes, est le sommet de Servillo adapte au même moment Le Misanthrope Leur collaboration ce hasard est plus que signifiant « Ce que j'ai tout dc suite aime chez Paolo, c'est qu'il cree dcs personnages fascinants, complexes et ambigus raconte « La vieestunjeu «Cheveux ras, regard eteint et spleen intense Dans le comédien C'est ce qui nous unit vraiment ses protagonistes a la son costume blanc un peu fripe, face a la baie de Naples, Toni Servillo melancolie ironique Des heros détruits par la vie, conscients de leurs balance cette réplique sono voce avec une puissance sidérante La scene, talents et qui les gaspillent avec légèreté » au beau milieu de L uomo in plu premier film de Paolo Sorrentino, est l'acte de naissance au cinema de Servillo. une déflagration d'une melan- LHOMME CENT VISAGES colie insondable qui forçait le spectateur a l'arrêt C'était en 2001 On Servillo n'existe pas que chez Sorrentino (on l'a vu chez Matteo Garrone, s'attendait d'autant moins a un coup pareil que le cinema transalpin Marco Bcllocchio ou Nicole Garcia), maîs en quatre films, les deux n'avait pas enfante d'acteur de ce calibre depuis Marcello L'industrie hommes ont noue une relation particulière ils sont tellement lies qu' on italienne, incapable de retrouv er sa splendeur des annees 60, n'avail plus oublierait presque que Servillo ne joue pas dans L Ami iie la famille aucune incarnation a offrir sinon des ombres pâlissantes et tout de suite Maîs qu'il soit crooner fatigue (L uomo in pm) inconnu reclus (Lei oubliées, quèlques clowns ou auteurs-acteurs (Benigni, Moretti) Maîs Conséquences de I amour 2004), homme d'Etat (II Diva 2008) ou dandy une presence pareille, aussi immédiate, qui serait venue occuper l'es- noctambule (La grande beiiezza) Servillo est le double du cinéaste et, pace vacant et tous les plans d'un film a ce point9 Personne on le risque, sa muse « Encore un truc dc journalistes ', s'amusc-t-il Douze ans plus tard, au telephone, on cherche a savoir d'où vient cette On a construit quelque chose d'unique, c'est vrai C'est une relation presence, a identifier un point de depart, des modeles Mastroianni9 mystérieuse et un peu étrange que je n'ai pas vraiment envie de décryp- Pacmo? « Oui, ils ont évidemment nourri mon imaginaire, concède ter Paolo écrit ses scénarios avec des acteurs précis en tête II ne vous Servillo, maîs ce ne sont pas mes vraies boussoles Si jc devais citer des prévient pas puis arrive un matin en disant "Tiens, j'ai cent ça pour references, je commencerais par Clan Mana Volonté, un acteur fasci- toi Qu'est-ce que tu en dis9" Et il me tend, par exemple, un script sur nant même dans l'immobilité II pouvait être tres physique, tres vivant, Giulio Andreotti ' Notre relation est fondée sur la confiance ct sur Ic maîs il savait faire preuve d'une remarquable economie de moyens Cela fait qu'on partage une certaine precision, une maniere de respecter la dit, mon maître reste Eduardo De Filippo L'égal de Jouvet chez vous, tradition tout en étant novateurs » un comédien qui cherchait Ic maximum d'effet avec un minimum de La tradition Parlons-en L'acteur s'uiscntdans la lignée des artistes popu- moyens » Que Toni Servillo cite le grand maître de la comedie napo- laires a l'italienne, quelque part entre Carmelo Bene et Dano to Son litaine n'a rien d'étonnant « Je suis d'abord un homme de theâtre », talent polymorphe est hérite du bouffon au sens le plus noble du terme

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tf Je ne fais pas diM

La grande bellezza, dè Paolo Sorrentmo Avec Toni Servillo, Ca rio Verrions, Sabnna Fenlli Sortie le 22 mai Critique page A4.

Maîs ne le qualifiez surtout pas de transformiste « Je n'aime pas ce mot, coupe-t il immédiatement Quand vous dites ça, j'entends 'cabot" Tout ce que je déteste » Cameleon, alors 9 Parce qu'entre le crooner, le Premier ministre, le mafieux (Gomomz Matteo Garrone, 2008), le cui- sinier repenti ( Une vie tranquille Claudio Cupellim, 2010) ou le dandy on a du mal a faire le lien et a le reconnaître sous des oripeaux aussi différents On se perdrait presque dans ses changements de registre, de forme, d'intensité Et dans les nuances de cette gueule incroyable que Sorrentmo cadre souvent en tres gros plan « C'est vrai que Paolo aime filmer mon visage, admet Servillo C est flatteur, maîs ça représente aussi un extraordinaire defi Dans La grande bellezza par exemple, il fallait faire comprendre en un regard ce que Jep pense de la vie qui l'entoure du temps qui passe et de la Ville eternelle Quand on élabore un rôle lors des séances de lecture, on s'observe, on se jauge, on s'interroge tout le temps Le personnage s'installe progressivement entre nous, il est lit- téralement la, entre lui et moi Et si Paolo s'approche autant, s'il cadre aussi serre, c'est avec l'idée qu'il va le toucher »

VIDE SALUTAIRE Capter le moindre frémissement, la moindre hésitation et la moindre faille « Par mes silences, j essaie d'exprimer des doutes, des question- nements, des regrets », analyse Servillo C'est sans doute ce qui définit en partie son jeu, car il n'est pas simplement un acteur maîs un « opera- teur », comme disait Deleuze, un agent qui travaille par « soustraction et amputation » répliques concassées, mots bnses, personnages dissous (et dissolus) Sur ce plan-la La grande bellezza marque la supériorité d'un homme au sommet de son art Le film raconte la lente déambula tion et la disparition d'un personnage dans un lieu intemporel et immobile Sorrentmo scrute son visage, le regarde marcher (« Jep se déplace de maniere légere, aérienne et vaporeuse On a beaucoup travaille la- dessus », explique l'acteur), terriblement present, maîs son « fond de commerce » reste le vide « Le néant, même, corrige-t-il Je croîs qu'il symbolise une certaine décadence de I Italie contemporaine, idée que les personnages de Paolo incarnent toujours un peu II traverse Rome comme les cercles de l'enfer C'est un cynique sentimental et j'adore jouer ces gens-la Même si c'est grave, même si c'est profond, il faut rester leger » « La vie est un jeu » Cette parole murmurée au bord dc l'eau n'aura jamais autant resonne GAELGOLHEN

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LAGRANDEBELLEZ Eléments de recherche : THE GREAT BEAUTY ou LA GRANDE BELLEZZA : film de Paolo Sorrentino, toutes citations 7124626300504/FCC/MAG/2 22 MAI 13 Quotidien Paris OJD : 323303 14 BOULEVARD HAUSSMANN 75438 PARIS CEDEX 09 - 01 57 08 50 00 Surface approx. (cm²) : 1448 N° de page : 25-26

Page 1/5 La dolce vita continue À la manière de Fellini en 1960, Paolo Sorrentino, dans son film « La Grande Bellezza », fait de Rome le miroir des travers de l'époque.

Toni Servillo dans La Grande Bellezza. Il y interprète Jep, un type désenchanté qui cherche toujours la grande beauté dans un monde de décadence.

LAGRANDEBELLEZ Eléments de recherche : THE GREAT BEAUTY ou LA GRANDE BELLEZZA : film de Paolo Sorrentino, toutes citations 0013736300504/GCP/ANR/1 22 MAI 13 Quotidien Paris OJD : 323303 14 BOULEVARD HAUSSMANN 75438 PARIS CEDEX 09 - 01 57 08 50 00 Surface approx. (cm²) : 1448 N° de page : 25-26

Page 2/5 L'ÉVÉNEMENT La fureur du Tibre COMPÉTITION Avec « La Grande Bellezza », Paolo Sorrentino signe une « Dolce Vita » du XXIe siècle. En salle mercredi.

au fameux défile de mode ecclésiastique À - r LLEE i CINËMA Un noceur fait visiter en douce les plus Éric Neuhoff beaux palais de la ville et soudain on pen eneuhoffsiefigaro fr se aux peintures murales qui s'effaçaient ^^K ^^^k eneiil au contact de l'air De la musique electro fino resonne dans ce decor solennel Une pu blicite Martini brille sur les toits cente- 1970 a fin du monde tarde a venir naires Tl y a des communiantes qui cou- Naissance a Naples Rome demeure le meilleur en- rent en pouffant, des fontaines, des de Paolo Sorrentino le 31 mai droit pour l'attendre Suivez le statues, des poitrines opulentes, une guide II s'appelle Tep Gambar- phrase de Céline en exergue, une strip- 2001 della On l'invite a toutes les fê- teaseuse, un amour perdu Tep ne \eut « L'Homme en plus » Ltes Elles sont clinquantes, survoltccs On plus s'embêter Le temps lui est compte 2004 y laisse sa peau ou son innocence Tep est Sa philosophie se résume désormais a un « Les Conséquences journaliste Jadis, il a écrit un roman au ti- haussement d'épaules II contemple avec de l'amour », tre tres annees soixante, L'Appareil hu- une moue a peine réprobatrice cette epo avec Toni Servillo main ll a ete couronne par un prix litte- que qui impose d'être célèbre avant de raire, le Barcarella Excusez du peu montrer son talent l'art est mort 2006 Depuis, plus rien Autrement dit que des « L'Ami de la famille », articles Les mondanités, il n'est même Le néant toujours avec Toni Servillo pas capable de les gâcher C'est comme si a un goût de prosecco éventé 2008 le Mastroianni de La Dolce Vita revenait Ça ne sert plus a rien d'écrire des livres « ll Divo », avec Toni Servillo, sous les traits dc Toni Servillo, avec son Boire des verres, c'est permis, mais pas cette fois dans le rôle de charme las, ses costumes froisses, son pa- au point de devenir importun Les seules Giulio Andreotti nama blanc ll rent! e chez lui au petit ma- lignes qu'on aperçoit sont des traits de tin poudre en provenance de Colombie Une 2011 Visiblement, la presse italienne paie naine dirige un grand quotidien Un « This Must Be the Place », plus que la française Le heros habite un auteur dramatique cherche un theâtie avec Sean Penn appartement a terrasse en face du Colisee pour sa maitresse comédienne Au bord 2013 Et on voue Berlusconi aux gémonies, on du Tibre, des PDG font leur jogging prétend que le pays est en faillite ] Le style Servillo se dévisse la tête sur leur passage « La Grande Bellezza » de Sorrentino est connu clinquant, éner- et on sent qu'il ne détesterait pas les voir gique, presque saoulant II s'adapte a succomber d'un arret cardiaque merveille a cette danse funèbre en techni- Le coeur, il y a longtemps que cet orga- color, a cet hommage a Fellini, a cette ne a ete remise au magasin des accessoi- voix-off qui cgrenc son désenchante- res Le néant a un goût de prosecco even ment Un cardinal récite des recettes de te L'âge pese sur l'estomac comme un cuisine Une romancieie engagée ne se minestrone tiède I a civilisation s'affadit gêne pas pour travailler a la television Un dans des discothèques aux odeurs de ta- couple d'aristocrates loue ses services bac froid Les paparazzi en feront un sujet pour apparaître dans des dîners On croise de une II y aura des flashs et des proces Fanny Ardant une nuit dans la rue et on se La routine, quoi souvient d'Anna Magnani disant « Bon Quèlques moments de grace surnagent soir Federico » au réalisateur de 8I '2 Le au milieu de cette décadence bon enfant salon d'un chirurgien esthetique repond (on est en Italie, apres tout) Une sainte de

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Sabrina Ferilli, Toni Servillo et Giorgio Pasotti. HAMNI FIORITO PATHE FILMS

104 ans pousse son dernier soupir Des fla- mants roses se reposent sur un balcon ^f « La Grande Bellezza » L'ernplo>e de maison jette sur tout cela un Comédie dramatique regard navre On ne saurait le lui repro- de Paolo Sorrenfino cher La comedie a assez dure Elle ne va Avec lom Servillo, Carlo Verdone, pas cesser pour autant L'Occident Sabrma Ferilli s'écroule Au moins, il fait ça au son de Duree 2 h 22 chants religieux Le naufrage selon Sor- Sortie ce mercredi rentino a du panache Moteur, on coule • • L'avis du Figaro : • • • O

Page 4/5 Paolo Sorrentino : « C'est mon film le plus mûr »

PROPOS RECUEILLIS PAR OLIVIER DELCROIX ^adelcroixx

aolo Sorrentino se sent chez lui malgré son âge certain, il cherche tou- à Cannes. À part son premier jours la grande beauté dans un monde de film, L'Homme en plus, tous les décadence. Il a passé sa vie à errer de fê- autres ont concouru en sélec- tes en soirées. Il a l'impression d'avoir tion officielle et Jl Divo a obtenu mené une existence privée de sens. Mais Ple prix du jury en 2007. En 2011, il présen- c'est le privilège des artistes que de trou- tait à Cannes This Must Be the Place, tour- ver dans l'inutile, l'artifice, le vain, et la ne aux États-Unis avec Sean Penn. Cette laideur une beauté et un sens qu'ils vont année, c'est La Grande Bellezza (« la pouvoir magnifier. Gambardella est as- grande beauté »), époustouflante décla- sez complexe, dans la mesure où il n'agit ration d'amour à Rome. pas de la même façon quand il est seul et quand il évolue en société. LE FIGARO. - Qu'est-ce qui vous a poussé à revenir à Rome après Tout cela rappelle La Dolce Vita... votre expérience américaine ? Bien sûr. C'est pour ça que nous nous Paolo SORRENTINO. - Je n'ai jamais eu sommes empêchés, Toni et moi, de re- d'ambition américaine. J'avais juste envie garder le film de Fellini, ce très haut som- de faire ce film-là avec Sean Penn. Après met de la cinématographie mondiale. avoir autant bourlingué, je voulais refaire Cela nous aurait donné le vertige ! un film à la maison. Cela faisait longtemps que je récoltais des petites histoires amu- Pourtant, Gambardella évoque santes ou tragiques, des personnages hauts irrésistiblement Mastroianni, notamment en couleur, des situations intrigantes qui quand il allume ses cigarettes... gravitaient autour de Rome. J'ai voulu Ha ! Ha ! C'est quelque chose de totale- trouver une manière de les rassembler ment inconscient. Mais nous savions que dans une trame narrative cohérente. la comparaison serait faite. Cela signifie en tout cas que La Dolce Vita est un Quel a été le fruit de votre réflexion ? film si important que nous l'avons in- C'est le personnage de Jep Gambardella, tériorisé, digéré... Je voulais que La incarné par Toni Servillo. Il s'est imposé Grande Bellezza reprenne les thèmes en dernier dans la gestation du film. Mais abordés dans les grands films italiens il a tout de suite fonctionné tel un guide, des années 1960 : le clergé, la noblesse, un fil rouge compatible avec ce que je la politique, autant de mondes qui sont voulais raconter. tout à la fois amusants et tragiques, pour mieux les ramener au présent et en pour- Paolo Sorrentino Qui est-il? suivre l'exploration. signe une Un journaliste mondain qui fête ses 65 époustouflante ans. Sa profession lui permet - comme à D'où vient le nom de déclaration d'amour moi - de fureter, d'être curieux, de por- Jep Gambardella ? à la Ville eternelle. ter son regard et traverser les différents C'est un nom de famille très com- DAZIRAM/ univers de cette Rome infatigable. J'ai eu mun là d'où je viens. De plus, je GEISLER FOTOPRESS l'occasion l'an dernier de faire quèlques trouvais ça élégant. Quant à Jep, c'est le diminutif exotique de interviews de personnalités pour un journal et cela m'a beaucoup amusé. Giuseppe, un prénom napolitain lui aussi très répandu. Un journaliste niais également un romancier raté... En choisissant délibérément, à 42 ans, un personnage Jep Gambardella est un personnage cha- leureux, cynique et désabusé qui trim- qui a plus de vingt ans balle avec lui une grande mélancolie que vous, avez-vous eu le sentiment de réaliser le film mais qui a été l'auteur d'un premier roman de jeunesse brillant et remarqué, de la maturité ? L'Appareil humain. Ce titre devait Je crois en tout cas que c'est mon film le plus mûr, le plus d'ailleurs être celui du film, mais j'ai trouvé que c'était trop prétentieux ! accompli. Mais j'espère que ce n'est pas mon dernier Gambardella est un type désenchanté et, film! i

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Toni Servillo, le Fregoli d'aujourd'hui C'est le Fregoli par excellence. Toni Ser- que, il trouve toujours une façon inédite de dans les années 1990, sous la direction villo est capable d'incarner les personna- le faire. Je ne m'en aperçois pas durant le notamment de Mario Martone et Paolo ges les plus opposés qui soient. Du terri- tournage, mais plus tard dans la salle de Sorrentino, représentants d'une nouvelle ble et froid Giulio Andreotti réinventé montage. Toni me surprend et m'émeut à génération du cinéma d'auteur. dans Jl Divo, au sénateur berlusconien de tout coup ! C'est un très grand comédien. » La célébrité internationale l'atteindra La Belle Endormie de Bellocchio, en pas- en 2008, au Festival de Cannes, où il est sant par les hommes d'affaires les plus De « Gomorra » à « Q Divo » l'interprète de deux films marquants : arrivistes, Servillo aura incarné ces der- Né le 25 janvier 1959 dans la province de Gomorra de Matteo Garrone, film sur la nières années les mille et un visages de Naples, Toni Servillo a baigné très tôt Camorra d'après une enquête de Roberto l'Italie au cinéma. dans une ambiance théâtrale. Et c'est par Saviano. Et Jl Divo de Paolo Sorrentino, « J'ai fait quatre films avec Toni Servillo, le théâtre que sa carrière d'acteur a com- où il interprète le leader de la Démocratie souligne le réalisateur Paolo Sorrentino. mencé. Dans les années 1980, il crée sa chrétienne Giulio Andreotti, récemment Onpeut dire que c'est une sorte d'alter ego propre compagnie et revivifie l'œuvre disparu. On a revu dernièrement Servillo cinématographique. Mon rapport avec Toni des grands auteurs tels que Pirandello et dans La Belle Endormie de Bellocchio. va bien au-delà de l'aspect professionnel. le Napolitain Eduardo De Filippo. Il s'est Avec La grande Bellezza, il est à nouveau C'est devenu un ami. Jl me surprend à cha- également intéressé au théâtre français dans la compétition cannoise. Et si, face à que scène. Son interprétation est toujours classique : il met en scène et interprète l'impérial Michael Douglas, il avait ses subtile et passe par de petites choses. Molière et Marivaux dans des spectacles chances de rafler le prix d'interprétation Quand je lui demande un regard mélancoli- qui auront fait date. Il aborde le cinéma masculine ? O. D. et M.-N. T.

LAGRANDEBELLEZ Eléments de recherche : THE GREAT BEAUTY ou LA GRANDE BELLEZZA : film de Paolo Sorrentino, toutes citations 0013736300504/GCP/ANR/1 ‘The Great Beauty’ Review: Paolo Sorrentino’s Magnificent Tribute to... http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-the-great-beau...

MAY 20, 2013 | 07:34PM PT

A densely packed, often astonishing cinematic feast that honors Rome in all its splendor and superficiality.

Jay Weissberg (http://variety.com/author/jay-weissberg/)

Rome ( http://variety.com/t/rome/ ) in all its splendor and superficiality, artifice and significance, becomes an enormous banquet too rich to digest in one sitting in Paolo Sorrentino ( http://variety.com/t/paolo- sorrentino/ )’s densely packed, often astonishing “ The Great (http://variety.com/t/the-great/ ) Beauty ( http://variety.com/t/beauty/ ).” A tribute to, and castigation of, the city whose magnificence has famously entrapped its residents in existential crises, the pic follows a stalled author gradually awakening from the slumber of intellectual paralysis. Very much Sorrentino’s modern take on the themes of Fellini’s “La dolce vita ( http://variety.com/t/dolce-vita/ ),” emphasizing the emptiness of society amusements, “Great Beauty” will surprise, perplex and bewitch highbrow audiences yearning for big cinematic feasts.

1 di 4 16/12/2013 16.08 ‘The Great Beauty’ Review: Paolo Sorrentino’s Magnificent Tribute to... http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-the-great-beau... SEE MORE: Cannes Film Festival ( http://variety.com/e/cannes- film-festival/ )

With a narrative that feels more like a line of dashes than a continuous stroke, the film is certain to give indigestion to some, who may dismiss it as a work of cinephile posing rather than genuine depth; never mind that the same censure was leveled at “ La dolce vita ( http://variety.com/t/la-dolce-vita/ )” 53 years ago. The comparison is more than just casual: Like Fellini’s masterpiece, “ The Great Beauty ( http://variety.com/t/the-great-beauty/ )” uses an existentially exhausted figure as a Dantesque guide through the decadence of modern Roman life, presenting a panoply of characters with only minimal exaggeration.

Things literally start off with a bang as the noontime cannon on the Janiculum Hill is fired, leading to a montage of Japanese tourists and local eccentrics among the area’s Risorgimento monuments, the latter characters recalling the menagerie of women at the spa in “8½.” From there Sorrentino jumps to a nighttime outdoor birthday bash for Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), jam-packed with people gyrating as suggestively as pole dancers, in a pulsating scene shot like a liquor advertisement (a neon Martini sign is inescapable).

Jep is a journalist whose one novel, “The Human Apparatus,” haunts him as a reminder of unrealized promise. In the long years since it won awards, he’s earned a healthy living with less challenging fare while entertaining the upper bourgeoisie on his fabulous terrace overlooking the Colosseum. His associates are a mix of businessmen, neurotic wives, wannabe authors and well-to-do matrons who pass the time outdoing each other with hollow statements exposing their self-involvement. It’s an accurate and damning group portrait, only barely updated from those depicted by Fellini, Scola and the Antonioni of “La notte.”

The promise of Jep’s early life is revived when the husband of his first lover, Elisa, tells him that her diaries declared her continued love for him. Memories of their long-ago encounter have a freshness that stands in sharp contrast to the exhausted pleasures of the present, and the feelings begin to germinate even as he conducts a relationship with Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli), a superannuated stripper (her character needs a bit more development). Further awakening comes with the arrival of Sister Maria (Sonia Gessner), an ancient holy woman whose simple statements shame the convoluted declarations of the demimonde.

2 di 4 16/12/2013 16.08 ‘The Great Beauty’ Review: Paolo Sorrentino’s Magnificent Tribute to... http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-the-great-beau... As with “ Il Divo ( http://variety.com/t/il-divo/ )” and “ This Must Be the Place (http://variety.com/t/this-must-be-the-place/ ),” Sorrentino continues to tackle major topics using an extraordinary combination of broad brushstrokes and minute detail. Passion via the intellect has become his trademark, well suited to this dissection of empty diversions, indulged in by latter-day Neros fiddling while Rome burns. The helmer also reveals his immersion in the great Italian cinema of the past, and even when every ingredient can’t be identified, the individual flavors will be familiar to most cineastes. A cameo by Fanny Ardant comes straight from Anna Magnani’s brief moment in “Fellini’s Roma,” informed by the heady perfume of that underrated muse Caterina Boratto. When Jep tells Ramona he’s taking her to a sea monster, images of the final sequence of “La dolce vita ( http://variety.com/t/vita/ )” spring to mind, just as a magician recalls the “Asa nisi masa” of “8½.”

It would be wrong, however, to think of “The Great Beauty” as a work dependent on, rather than indebted to, these predecessors. The pic opens with a quote from Louis-Ferdinand Celine, “Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.” At the end, Sister Marie speaks of the importance of roots. Both concepts are key to the film; for Sorrentino, as for thousands of travelers and artists, the impossibly rich history of the Eternal City ( http://variety.com /t/eternal-city/ ) offers equal doses of imagination and solidity, her glories retaining the power to inspire and stupefy.

There’s something about Servillo’s manic smile that always suggests world- weariness; he lacks the seductive lassitude of Marcello Mastroianni’s Fellini figures, but he’s aiming for something else, specifically the waste of a promising intellect in thrall to emptiness. Sorrentino populates his film with some of the strongest actors in Italy, thesps like Galatea Ranzi and Roberto Herlitzka who make small roles memorable with the force of their understanding.

As always, Luca Bigazzi’s lensing is a joy, his elegant crane and dolly shots matched by meticulous compositions. Rome has rarely looked better, resplendent in baroque tonalities, showing off the city’s palaces, aqueducts and fountains. Even the final shot at the close of the credits, when the camera almost pans to St. Peter’s, the thwarted expectation of the basilica’s towering presence is itself a statement of the Church’s omnipresence. Romano (Carlo Verdone) says that after 40 years, Rome has disappointed him; in reality, perhaps he’s disappointed Rome.

3 di 4 16/12/2013 16.08 ‘The Great Beauty’ Review: Paolo Sorrentino’s Magnificent Tribute to... http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-the-great-beau...

Cannes Film Review: 'The Great Beauty' Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 20, 2013. Running time: 140 MIN. Original title: "La grande bellezza"

Production (Italy-France) A Medusa (in Italy)/Pathe (in France) release of an Indigo Film, Babe Films, Pathe Prod., France 2 Cinema production, in collaboration with Medusa Film, with the participation of Canal Plus, Cine Plus, France Televisions. (International sales: Pathe Intl., Paris.) Produced by Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima. Co-producers, Fabio Conversi, Jerome Seydoux.

Crew Directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Screenplay, Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello. Camera (color, widescreen), Luca Bigazzi; editor, Cristiano Travaglioli; music, Lele Marchitelli; pr oduction designer, Stefania Cella; costume designer, Daniela Ciancio; sound (Dolby Digital), Emanuele Cecere; sound editor, Silvia Moraes; associate producers, Carlotta Calori, Guendalina Ponti, Romain Le Grand, Vivien Aslanian, Muriel Sauzay; line producer, Viola Prestieri; assistant director, Davide Bertoni; casting, Annamaria Sambucco.

With Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi, Massimo de Francovich, Roberto Herlitzka, Isabella Ferrari, Franco Graziosi, Giorgio Pasotti, Massimo Popolizio, Sonia Gessner, Anna della Rosa, Luca Marinelli, Serena Grandi, Ivan Franek, Vernon Dobtcheff, Dario Cantarelli, Lillo Petrolo, Luciano Virgilio, Giusi Merli, Anita Kravos, Giulio Brogi, Fanny Ardant. (Italian dialogue)

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The Great Beauty

21 May, 2013 | By Lee Marshall

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino. Italy-France. 2013. 140mins

Paolo Sorrentino’s follow-up to This Must Be The Place is an alternately elegiac and world-weary cinematic fresco of contemporary Rome that references both the melancholy hedonism of La Dolce Vita or Fellini’s Roma and the decadence of the latter days of the Roman empire. It’s a virtuoso piece of filmmaking featuring a magnificently jaded Toni Servillo as a journalist who, like Mastroiainni in Fellini’s masterpiece, drifts listlessly from party to party and interview to interview, wallowing in the waste of his writing talent as in a warm bath.

Although Sorrentino’s Fellini mash-up adds little of substance to what il maestro showed and said all those years ago, it’s still a remarkable cinematic experience.

With its venal clerics, failed authors, aristocrats for rent, washed-up TV stars and shabby nightlife entrepreneurs, The Great Beauty ( La Grande Bellezz a) is, at times, a profound film about superficiality, loss of innocence, missed chances and imitations of life; but at others it recycles a vision of Rome, and a fashionable ennui, that Fellini nailed once and for all more than 50 years ago.

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The first fifteen minutes of the almost three-hour film, as the camera pans and swoop s through a Sorrentino-skewed view of tourist Rome before homing in on a wild rooftop party, make for exhilarating viewing. What follows is part character study, part mood piece. The obvious comparison is Il Divo : but that impressionistic operetta was grounded in historical fact. The Great Beauty , on the other hand, drifts rootlessly like its hero through a series of interconnected vignettes. Paradoxically, this is a film that may fare better outside of Italy. On home turf, Sorrentino’s vision of Roman soirees and pseudo-literary life will come across as a little dated.

The film’s tone is set by an opening on-screen quotation from French writer Celine’s bitterly misanthropic 1930s novel Journey to the End of the Night . But it might just have easily have led with a bon mot Gore Vidal comes up with in Fellini’s Roma : “Rome is a wonderful place from which to observe the end of the world”.

Our guide through this beautiful, decadent place is Jep Gambardella (Servillo), an ageing serial seducer and party animal who published a well-received novel years ago but now works as a society and arts journalist for a national newspaper. Impeccably turned out, Jep drifts and drawls from dance party to dinner party, most of which take place on Roman rooftops or terraces – like Jep’s own, which overlooks the Colosseum on one side and a convent garden on the other.

We’re gradually introduced to Jep’s circle of friends: struggling playwright Romano (locally iconic Italian comedy actor-director Carlo Verdone), who is the closest Jep comes to a best friend, and a cast of others that include his editor Dadina and a left-wing writer Stefania, whose pretensions to be ‘writing committed books that make a difference’ are destroyed by Jep in one memorable sequence. So great is Jep’s ennui that he can hardly even be bothered to go through the Casanova motions anymore.

But though he can be hugely cruel and cynical, there’s a sensitivity and even romanticism buried in their somewhere – which comes out both in his surprisingly tender relationship with Ramona (Ferilli), the down-to-earth stripper daughter of an old friend, and in the appearance of the husband of a recently dead woman who, it transpires, inspired Jep’s only novel, and never stopped loving him in 35 years of marriage to another man. Death is a constant presence in a film whose very best scene is set at a funeral.

Potshots are taken at the church (priests and nuns order champagne in chic restaurants; a pure young nun turns up at a high-class botox clinic), at the wackier end of performance theatre, at the contemporary art world – though this also supplies a scene of great lyricism. Luca Bigazzi’s ravishing camerawork, a seductive score that alternates sacred choral music and pounding house, seamless editing and the graceful fugue-like narrative structure make for a film that is always a pleasure to watch. This said, there’s something a little corny about the flashbacks to Jep’s teen romance, and two quasi-fantasy sequences involving a magician’s giraffe and a flock of flamingos look like desperate attempts to weld some circus magic onto a film that is essentially about physical and moral exhaustion.

Sure, The Great Beauty ’s mixture of social and religious satire and existential melancholy, its reaching out for poetry even as poetry is ridiculed, has been done before, by The Great Federico. But although Sorrentino’s Fellini mash-up adds little of substance to what il maestro showed and said all those years ago, it’s still a remarkable cinematic experience.

Production companies: Indigo Film, Medusa Film

Co-production: Babe Films, Pathé Production, France 2 Cinema

International sales: Pathe International, www.patheinternational.com

Producers: Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima

Co-producers: Fabio Conversi, Jerome Seydoux

Screenplay: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello

Cinematography: Luca Bigazzi

Editor: Cristiano Travaglioli

Production designer: Stefania Cella

Music: Lele Marchitelli

Main cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi, Isabella Ferrari, Massimo De Francovich, Roberto Herlitzka

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The Great Beauty's Toni Servillo: playboy of the Italian world Toni Servillo has become known as Paolo Sorrentino's muse. He talks about his latest role as an indolent playboy in a grand, swooning epic

Catherine Shoard The Guardian, Thursday 29 August 2013 18.27 BST

Tony Servillo as Rome playboy Jep Gambardella in Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty.

Toni Servillo clutches his cigar throughout the Cannes press conference for his new film. The following day, he still has it, tight between his fingers. Sometimes, it is transferred to the corner of his mouth, gripped between teeth, Groucho-style. Mostly it rests in his hand. Throughout, it remains unlit. He quit five years ago, he explains, when I ask if he is going to go smoke it soon. "This is therapeutic. It helps me resist."

The Great Beauty I'm amazed. It's not a temptation? He shakes a head flecked with (La Grande Bellezza) stubble, topped with a puff of white. His face, folded and rubbery Production year: 2013 as a seal, creases briefly then returns to neutral. He and the Countries: Italy, Rest translator share a look. The look of those who know what it is to of the world Runtime: 142 mins quit smoking. Directors: Paolo Sorrentino This superficially louche, but actually slightly strange and Cast: Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Toni repressed little ritual is a rare point of overlap between Servillo Servillo and his character in The Great Beauty. The movie is a

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More on this film masterpiece, a grand swooning epic, lush to the point of insanity, Fellini turned up to 11. Servillo plays bon vivant socialite Jep Gambardella, a Rome playboy who wrote a fine novel in his youth but has since devoted himself to immaculate indolence. By day he rests and reads a little; by night he comes alive, a vampire in a linen suit, throwing great raves for primped and preened pals in his penthouse. Early in the film, a journalist comes to interview him about his defunct literary career; he berates her for caring (intellectually, Jep is a closet puritan).

Servillo shares the feeling. "That an actor is so often asked their opinion on soccer or cuisine or politics or public transport," he says, via a translator, "is part of the degeneration process in showbusiness. Politicians in Italy seem to spend so much time giving interviews, they don't have time to make the laws."

And what's the effect of such focus on superficiality? "We have lost insight. We don't seem to have the necessary concentration to ponder in-depth, or to set up a dialectic confrontation. We just spend time speaking our opinions and this creates a multiplication effect of confusion and chaos." He sits back and sucks on his cigar.

Servillo is a singular star. As Criss Henderson, director of a Chicago theatre where he recently performed said, he's actually plain confounding. "I'm almost at a loss to describe him. He's extraordinary. He isn't stamping his performance with any movie star quality. He's simple."

In cinema he is best known to English-language audiences as Paolo Sorrentino's muse, the man who has had a lead – and a big hand – in the director's best films. He was the dignified gangster in The Consequences of Love (2004), the slippery, cadaverous prime minister in Il Divo (released in 2008, the same year he starred as the chilling crime boss in Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah). He has a thriving, highbrow theatrical career, co-founded a major company called Teatri Uniti in 1987, has worked solidly in all mediums for the past three decades.

Yet the key to this pre-eminent Italian actor of the age has to be his hypnotic unknowability. In The Great Beauty, his mask of sardonic disregard is mesmerising. Jep is gentle, kind, attractive, and also a coward who smirks hopelessly, through the Botox, in the face of ageing. (Servillo, 54, plays 65 in the film, and could probably pass for it.)

Italy, he says, is especially concerned with la bella figura , in particular "the entrepreneurial class". "They seem very much obsessed with the present. They disregard the past and forget to plan for the future. It is this that triggers this general atmosphere of what I call a moral lack of tone."

Out of character, Servillo's face loses a little of its intrigue. He looks normal, speaks neutrally, whatever the content. I ask at one point why Sorrentino's films are more acclaimed outside Italy, where people can't hope to pick up the nuances (there's a fair bit in this one about the specific disposition of the Neapolitan flâneur). "I don't really

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care," he says, mild and smiling, and meaning it.

The Great Beauty is intentionally overwhelming; its feast of riches borderline nauseating. In an early scene, a Japanese tourist keels over while sightseeing; perhaps with the heat, more likely intoxicated by the visuals. Ultimately, it suggests that only by living in poverty can one hope to survive such a saturated environment.

"I think that beauty can injure you to death," nods Servillo. "It can cause an injury that can never be cured. Or it can so traumatise you, your life changes direction. The beauty of the harmony of nature that is for ever lost, or a daily rite that you perform, or diving into the sea for a swim. Those experiences are going to mark you."

So he is not fearful for the audience's health, sitting there, soaking it up? "No, no, no," he says, cigar drumming the table. "Each single gesture of art must be daring. One must not be concerned with the side-effects."

The Great Beauty is released in the UK on 6 September.

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3 di 3 11/09/2013 20.24 New York Sorrentino's The Great Beauty Is a Blast - Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/4461406/

Sorrentino's The Great Beauty Is a Blast There's little sense in trying to resist the film's tumultuous visual banquet By Michael Atkinson published: November 13, 2013 Some movies come barreling out of their caves like armies on Janus Films the sociocultural warpath, self-consciously defining themselves as psychographic events, marking The Way Things Are Now and becoming part of history in the process. Given the ambition, we should embrace these rare explosions when they happen, even more so now perhaps than in the '60s, when such filmmaking hubris was thick on the ground.

Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty blasts off from its very first plunge into the social stew of contemporary Rome,

Sabrina Ferilli in The Great Beauty conscientiously reinventing Fellini's La Dolce Vita for the 21st century and nailing the city's chattering leisure class to the Details: wall for all time. There's little sense in trying to resist the The Great Beauty film's relentless boogie-woogie party vibe, its tumultuous Directed by Paolo Sorrentino visual banquet, its unpredictable sense of switchblade satire, Janus Films its fools' parade of modern grotesques, or its river of startling Opens November 15, Lincoln Plaza melancholy, turning from a wary trickle to a flash flood by Cinemas film's end. Sorrentino's vision is the size of Rome itself, and his confidence is dazzling. Follow @VoiceFilmClub It's only after a solid 10 minutes of social-fabric portraiture, Subscribe to the Voice Film Club Baz Luhrmann-but-beautiful montages, and fashion-show podcast surrealisms that we first glimpse Jep (Italian everyman Toni Servillo), emerging from a sweaty nightclub throng (in slo-mo, Voice Film as the dancers pulsate at hyperspeed) to light the first of a Mi piace 451 billion cigarettes. Our guide through this everything-old-is- new-and-old-again orgy, Jep is a classic high society pilot fish, a writer with an inflated reputation most concerned, even as his 65th birthday comes and goes, with staying up all night at the right parties and cynically occupying the sunset edge of a civilization in decline. Contentedly supporting himself with art-world superstar magazine profiles — and never entertaining the possibility of risking everything on a new book — Jep is the New Decadent, wading through a human sea of fakers, scammers, agents, salesmen, wastrels, trophy whores, and aristo-narcissists, an expansive platoon of characters that Sorrentino sketches in quick, vivid swatches and yet somehow imbues with sadness and loss, even as they're conga-lining around the swimming pool or settling in for a ceremonial Botox-injection party.

Servillo is a master of self-possessed absurdity, and Jep is a fascinating creation, a brainy, pink-jacket hedonist in a desperately self-anesthetizing Gomorrah who thought he might live forever and is only now realizing how evanescent he and his empty lifestyle actually are. (The scene in which he politely dismantles the personal mythology of a Communist Party TV pundit, uncovering every scandalous secret of her adult life, is superbly funny until it's grim and chilling.) With its radical shifts in perspective, its high-spirited buffoonery, its nonchalant Marcello Mastroianni hero, and its population of dwarfs, nuns, near-nude orgyists, and preposterous high-art charlatans, The Great Beauty positively flaunts its Fellini-ness, which is not nearly as irritating as some of the times Fellini did so

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himself.

La Dolce Vita — Fellini's bitter-sour survey of mid-century Roman media life and publicity sluts — remains as resonant and inescapable for fortysomething Italian cinéastes as Scorsese's early films are for Americans; in Sorrentino's updated retool, the older film survives as echoes, giving Jep's adventures in the land of Roman neo-glitz an inescapable historical context and a deeper sense of menopausal horror.

The apocalyptic rue of Don DeLillo's novels comes to mind as Sorrentino's hyperactive camera etches a culture-wide fresco of an intelligentsia drinking, screwing ,and shimmying all the way to doomsday. (Of course Sorrentino seized the rather Herzogian opportunity offered by the half-sunk Costa Concordia ocean liner, regardless of its distance from Rome.) Rancid fun is made of Marina Abramovic, Mother Teresa, and Francesco Vezzoli, of the Vatican, high art, old money, and the Mob. Sorrentino spares almost no one except, oddly, Silvio Berlusconi. Jep finds and loses what he thinks might be love (with Sabrina Ferilli's voluptuous and laconic middle-aged stripper), but his arc sometimes gets lost in the hullabaloo. No matter — it's Rome itself that's dying, and though characters talk a good game about getting out and being free of the city's hollow madness, the film doesn't really end. It just escapes and gets lost in an adolescent memory of a beautiful girl.

It's about time Italian movies enjoyed a world-class renaissance, which Sorrentino finally, after several high-profile mediocrities ( Il Divo , This Must Be the Place ), joins alongside Matteo Garrone ( Reality ), Luca Guadagnino ( I Am Love ), Michelangelo Frammartino ( Le Quattro Volte ), and the autumnal acts of Marco Bellocchio and the Taviani brothers. So rambunctious and densely inhabited it's a movie you visit, not merely watch, The Great Beauty is also one of the greatest films about modern social dissolution, an epic art-film subgenre that may well have begun with Fellini's classic more than a half-century ago, and never gets old.

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TV & Movies Movie reviews: 'The Great Beauty,' 'Dear Mr. Watterson' Paolo Sorrentino creates a glorious contemporary drama about la dolce vita, starring Toni Servillo; an unfocused documentary about 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip creator Bill Watterson

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013, 12:00 PM

Sabrina Ferilli stars in "The Great Beauty," about an aging Roman journalist looking back on his life.

THE GREAT BEAUTY — 4 stars

An Italian author looks back on his life (2:22). Not rated: Sex, nudity, language. In Italian with subtitles. Lincoln Plaza.

Calling Paolo Sorrentino’s vividly original drama a 21st century “La Dolce Vita” is unjust, but not entirely inaccurate. Sorrentino’s dazzling tribute to Roman indulgence is a bittersweet, slightly surreal epic. A confident, adored journalist, Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), is forced, after his 65th birthday, to take stock of himself. This means looking backward, into his life and loves, as well as assessing his overstuffed present and uncertain future. It’s a glorious experience, one that blends both compassionate dismay and wry delight over Italy’s own, eternal excess.

DEAR MR. WATTERSON — 2 stars

Documentary about fans of the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes ” (1:30). Not rated. Cinema Village.

Looking back on his work several years after retiring, “Calvin and Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson referred to the “fun, magic and beauty” of comics. Regrettably, few of those qualities can be found in this unfocused mash note to Watterson’s celebrated strip.

The deeply private, intensely ideological and undeniably brilliant Watterson would make an absolutely fascinating subject. But director Joel Allen Schroeder has no access to him. So instead he talks a lot about how much he loves “Calvin and Hobbes” and then invites other fans to do the same.

Fortunately, many of these fans are also comic strip artists, who can at least share some insights into their profession. (Most compelling is “Bloom County’s” Berkeley Breathed, Watterson’s friend and closest competitor in the late ’80s.) Even so, your money would be better used — and Schroeder’s points better made — if you spent it on any “Calvin and Hobbes” collection instead.

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REVIEW The Great Beauty : Sorrentino’s La Dolce Vita 2.0 This fresco of Rome's high and low society is the year's grandest, most exhilarating foreign film

By Richard and Mary Corliss Nov. 15, 2013 Add a Comment

Roma o morte —”Rome or death”—reads the inscription on a statue at the beginning of The Great Beauty , Paolo Sorrentino’s wondrous depiction of high and low society. As seen through the tired but still acute eyes of journalist Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), Garibaldi’s rallying cry might be changed to “Rome and death,” or possibly “Rome is dead,” for the Eternal City seems near exhaustion, perhaps clinically post-mortem, but still partying defiantly at its own wake.

In his youth Jep wrote an acclaimed novel, The Human Apparatu s. Now he is 65, with a fabulous terrace apartment overlooking the Colosseum, and the debauchers who have gathered at his birthday celebration chatter and dance the

night away like the guests at a Gatsby revel. Secure in his Gianni Fiorito reputation as “king of the socialites,” Jep is gnawed by Toni Servillo in 'The Great Beauty' unrealized promise. He could not complete his second novel because, he says, “I was looking for the great beauty, and I never found it.”

(READ: Mary Corliss on Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo )

Beginning with the sudden death of a Japanese tourist and ending with a 103-year-old nun’s arduous climb on her knees up the steps of St. John’s Church, The Great Beauty is gratefully indebted to three films by Federico Fellini: La Dolce Vita , 8½ and Roma . Like the Marcello Mastroianni character in La Dolce Vita , Jep is a fastidious observer and enervated participant in Rome’s night life. Like Mastroianni in that film and 8½, he is bewitched and haunted by the vision of a seraphic young woman, his first love (“Now here’s something I want to show you,” she says before opening her blouse in Jep’s intensest memory.) Sorrentino—who won Cannes ’ Jury Prize in 2008 for his Il Divo , also starring the great Servillo—is as preoccupied as Fellini with the way people fight emotional stasis with wild movement. He stuffs, nearly engorges, this 2 hour-and-20-minute film with outrageous and gloriously visual anecdotes.

(READ: Federico Fellini: 5 Reasons He Still Matters )

One of these offers a clue to Sorrentino’s theme. On the Tebaldi estate, Jep encounters an exhaustive art project: more than 10,000 portraits of a man who was photographed every day of his life, by his father and later by himself, as one person’s record of his promise and growth and—since the man is still in his thirties—a preview of his decline. Jep, who has written about nearly everyone, and slept with them too, finds that he is on that slope to oblivion. As a child, he had loved “the smell of other people’s old houses.” His educated nose can still pick up the scent of grandeur, the rank odor of decay. And now he can smell it in himself.

Like Sorrentino’s corrosive comedy The Family Friend , shown at Cannes in 2006, the new film sees old men as vampires who sustain themselves by supping on the vitality of the young. And like Il Divo , his acid-etched portrait of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, The Great Beauty mixes journalism and satire. The odd and saving additions: an affection for nearly all of its outsize characters, and a melancholy that the flaming creatures of his acquaintance will soon burn out. Jep’s oldest friend, the aging poet Romano (Carlo Verdone),

1 di 2 16/12/2013 15.21 Movie Review: 'The Great Beauty' — Sorrentino's 'La Dolce Vita' 2.0 |... http://entertainment.time.com/2013/11/15/the-great-beauty-sorrentinos-l...

gets to this point when he asks, ”What’s the matter with nostalgia? It’s the only thing left for those of us who have no faith in the future.”

(READ: Richard Corliss on Sorrentino’s A Friend of the Family ) The Great Beauty , an essay on nostalgia, gives even the cynics a faith in the vibrancy of movies and the reviving artistry of Paolo Sorrentino. The movie, which was shut out of official prizes at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, will have to make do with our citation: it is the year’s grandest, most exhilarating foreign film.

2 di 2 16/12/2013 15.21 The Great Beauty: The Glory That Is Rome | Regina Weinreich http://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-weinreich/the-great-beauty-the-g...

November 26, 2013

The Great Beauty: The Glory That Is Rome Posted: 11/17/2013 9:39 am

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In The Great Beauty, a gorgeously shot picture of contemporary Rome, albeit fictional, it is refreshing to see that this tourist mecca of monumental historic significance has a shallow center just like all the other important world cities of note. You could say this movie whose central character is a writer of one novel so many years ago who has evolved into a journalist of art, parties, and society gossip is like the visual equivalent of T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" with references to a glorious cultural past that now simply exists in fragments. When he is charged with being a misogynist, that character, Jeb Gambardella, corrects the accusation: No, I am a misanthropist. And while he wears this name as a badge of honor to go along with his impeccably tailored suits, fortunately the film does not agree with him. Within this engrossing spectacle, some of the most dramatic faces this side of Fellini scowl and grin. You have to love them.

Beginning with an epigraph from Celine's Journey to the End of Night, and a montage of snapshot Rome, the film's journey is to penetrate the postcard perfection of this place with literary irony and large questions: what do you like most in life? Jeb, brutally honest, tells it like it is, especially when he lays himself open as target. "I feel old," he confesses to a stripper, who replies, "You're no spring chicken."

In 2000 when his movie Malena was all the rage, the Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore told me that all that anyone wants to see in Italian movies is romantic drama set in the war years. In daring to depict the Europe of now, The Great Beauty's director Paolo Sorrentino garners accolades: The Great Beauty is Italy's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and was just nominated for European Film Awards in all the major categories. Celebrating the film's theatrical opening and award nominations at a special dinner at Armani/ Ristorante this week, filmmakers praised Sorrentino and chatted about their projects: Paul Schrader is preparing to direct a film to star Nick Cage; Sonia Nassery Cole will make a film in Afghanistan, and Israel Horovitz is just back from Europe where he directed the film version of one of his plays, My Old Lady, starring Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline, and Kristin Scott Thomas. William Becker, chairman of Janus Films, attended the dinner as well. Janus/ Criterion Collection is The Great Beauty's American distributor.

Admiring his central actor, Toni Servillo, I asked Paolo Sorrentino how he directed him in the key brilliance of being both text and subtext simultaneously. Having worked with Servillo before, Sorrentino said, I just tell him, go.

A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.

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Review: 'The Great Beauty' intoxicates with masterful Toni Servillo

Paolo Sorrentino's 'Great Beauty' is a radiant work on the meaning of life beyond high society with Toni Servillo in exquisite mode.

By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

4:00 PM PST, November 21, 2013

As its name promises, "The Great Beauty" is drop-dead gorgeous, a film that is luxuriously, advertisement seductively, stunningly cinematic. But more than intoxicating imagery is on director Paolo Sorrentino's mind, a lot more.

One of Italy's most impressive contemporary filmmakers, Sorrentino has a superb sense of how to fill a wide screen and, working with his longtime cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, a wizard with camera movement, his visuals display the intoxicating richness of color 35-millimeter film in a way few contemporary ventures can match. When Sorrentino says in the press notes that "a single shot, if well thought out and balanced, can enthrall and say more than ten pages of dialogue," he's as good as his word.

But because Sorrentino is reunited as well with his signature actor, the masterful Toni Servillo, remarkable as Italian career politician Giulio Andreotti in the director's best known film, "Il Divo," it's a given that ideas and emotions will be as important here as the images.

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What Sorrentino (who co-wrote the script with Umberto Contarello) and his team have created is a portrait of a country, a city and, most of all, a suave and unflappable man. That would be Jep Gambardella, Rome's unofficial "king of the high life" and party chronicler without equal.

Talking in voice-over, Jep informs us he came to Rome from Naples when he was 26: "I didn't want to simply be a socialite, I wanted to become the king of socialites. And I succeeded. I didn't just want to attend parties. I wanted the power to make them fail."

How well Jep succeeded is visible in "The Great Beauty's" first major set piece, the orgiastic phantasmagoria of his 65th birthday party set in his showcase apartment overlooking the Coliseum. Jep is glimpsed on the dance floor as completely radiant with joy as only the man of the moment, the hour and the decade can be.

But we soon find out there is more to Jep than we initially understand. Forty years earlier he wrote a novel, "The Human Apparatus," that was so perceptive people continue to ask him why he hasn't written another. Even his editor, Dadina (Giovanna Vignola), an acerbic dwarf, tells him his career has not delivered on the potential his talent promised.

"The Great Beauty" is too sophisticated a film to have Jep dissolve in a welter of regret. Immaculately turned out in a series of custom tailored suits and dazzling sports coats, Jep continues to experience the pull of his accustomed world, but he starts to feel as well that he no longer wants to do things he doesn't want to do.

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More than that, after hearing some startling news that recalls his very first love affair, Jep starts to think about larger questions. He tries to decide what of value has mattered to him in his life, and whether that can still matter again.

Part of this process becomes a search for the kind of human connection Jep has mostly kept at arm's length, a search that comes to include interactions with two very different women, a high-class striptease artiste named Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli) and a Mother Teresa-type saint (Giusi Merli) who isn't comfortable unless she can sleep on the floor.

Because this is Rome, and because Jep is primarily a journalist, comparisons between "The Great Beauty" and Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" are inevitable, especially because Sorrentino says Fellini's films "are indelibly stamped on me and may have guided my film."

But this is Italy more than half a century later, the time of the somehow bleaker excesses of the Berlusconi era, and the oddities that Jep witnesses, from a maestro of Botox to a Marina Abramovic-type performance artist named Talia Concept, seem increasingly dissipated and disillusioning.

Adding a key element to Sorrentino's world is his exceptional use of music, "an inevitable mix of the sacred and the profane, just as Rome famously is," the director says, which specifically means modern music by composers like Henryk Gorecki and David Lang combined with Italian pop anthems. What we hear is always unexpected but completely appropriate.

The same can be said for the film's often startling imagery, which includes a flock of flamingos on Jep's terrace and an enormous giraffe in ancient ruins. Rome never looked more beautiful, and the acting ability of Servillo, who can do more with less than almost any actor going, makes this a personal journey well worth experiencing.

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'The Great Beauty'

No MPAA rating

Running time: 2 hours, 22 minutes

Playing: At Nuart, West Los Angeles

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2 di 3 29/11/2013 10.45 The New Yorker, Nov 25, 2013 11/18/13, 8:47 AM

http://archives.newyorker.com/global/print.asp?path=/djvu/Conde%20N…motepreﬁx=http://images.archives.newyorker.com&pagecount=142&v=v28 Page 1 of 2 The New Yorker, Nov 25, 2013 11/18/13, 8:47 AM

http://archives.newyorker.com/global/print.asp?path=/djvu/Conde%20N…motepreﬁx=http://images.archives.newyorker.com&pagecount=142&v=v28 Page 2 of 2 VULTURE.COM Ebiri on The Great Beauty: A Daring Cinematic High-Wire Act

By Bilge Ebiri

The characters in Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty like to refer to themselves as royalty: “The King of the High Life,” “the Queen of Misfits,” and so on. There are even some actual princesses — aging, shrewish ones. They haunt galleries and marble-decked salons and piazzas surrounded by statues of gods and kings and saints. But framed against those silent, immobile creatures of the past, today’s wannabes look like a small, sorry lot. They’ve got money and influence to burn, but they’ve got nowhere to go.

Sorrentino’s hero is an aging author named Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), who wrote a best- selling masterpiece of Italian literature 40 years ago and has been living off its success these many decades. He hasn’t written anything of note since, save the occasional magazine profile. Instead, Jep gives parties — amazing, explosive, eat-your-heart-out-Gatsby parties — for Rome’s moneyed classes. Sorrentino, unrepentant aesthete that he is, foregrounds the debauchery, and even before we meet Jep, we’re there twirling amid the writhing dancers — some beautiful, some grotesque, some beautifully grotesque. His camera dollies, cranes, and booms in ways both smooth and dizzying. Meanwhile, a tattooed woman strips inside a soundproof glass cage. An aging showgirl jumps out of a giant cake. A dwarf gets tossed. There are shrill breakups and phony courtships. Con men and businessmen cavort with models, models cavort with actors, and Rome’s timeless statues look down on it all. (It helps that Jep has an amazing pad right across the street from the Coliseum. If you’re a fiend for real estate porn, you’ll want to find a way to mainline this movie.) It’s hard to turn our eyes away from all this ravishing imagery. Or for that matter, the eclectic soundtrack: techno mariachi bands jutting up against brassy party music, angelic choirs singing Robert Burns verses, etc. Sorrentino understands that he has to seduce us with Jep’s world, even as he lays bare its soullessness.

Federico Fellini is an obvious touch point here: Sorrentino nods to both the corrosive hedonism of La Dolce Vita and the emotional paralysis of 8½, but his sensuous images outdo even the master’s. The Great Beauty is both a bacchanal and a dirge. Jep has filled his life with fun and frivolity; there’s nothing of substance left. It’s not so much that everybody around him is superficial — for all that venom, the film treats its characters with generosity — it’s that he doesn’t allow them to be anything but. One night, an author friend idly dismisses Jep’s work as shallow, and our hero calmly unleashes a torrent of humiliating criticism, knocking his guest’s class hypocrisy, her readerless books, her supposedly loving husband’s infidelity. At first, it’s a deeply satisfying scene; the guest’s smugness certainly deserved to be taken down a peg. But we quickly realize that Jep could probably bombard anyone with such invective. He sees only hypocrisy and shallowness, without quite realizing that these are traits all humans at various points share. He wants to live, but the idea of life itself is too gauche for him. So, he merely exists, a wax figure, a ghost. (Or maybe something even more sinister: Years ago, I suggested that Sorrentino’s political epic Il Divo might be, symbolically at least, a vampire movie, and I could say the same thing for The Great Beauty.) As Jep goes from party to party, woman to woman, he has flashbacks to his youth, in particular to one gone-but-not-forgotten love affair that seems to hold a key to his inner malaise. But does it, really? The director likes to code certain important backstory moments in his films, but he never really tells us what they mean. They stand not as signposts but as passages — paths not taken, perhaps, or distant memories of the people we used to be. By the end, we understand very little about what Jep really wants, but we understand better why he’ll never have it.

At one point, Jep interviews a performance artist named Talia Concept, whose act involves shaving a sickle-and-hammer into her red bush and head-butting walls. She talks about “extra-sensoriality” and “vibrations” and then asks him to ask her about her mom’s abusive boyfriend. She’s a total phony, of course, but in her phoniness one senses a need for some kind of connection. In her own bluntly hyper-intellectualized, misguided way, she’s looking for the same thing he is. But again, what is it? I’ve seen the film three times and I’m still not sure. The Great Beauty is a subtly daring cinematic high-wire act — an entire film built around one character’s unrealized, unspecified yearning. And it might just be the most unforgettable film of the year.