Search  for anything...
Criterion

The Great Beauty (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray + DVD]

Based on 2,227 reviews
Condition: Used - Good
Checking for the best price...
$30.65
Save $9.30 was $39.95

Buy Now, Pay Later

As low as $7 / mo
  • – 4-month term
  • – No impact on credit to apply
  • – Instant approval decision
  • – Secure and straightforward checkout

Ready to go? Add this product to your cart and select a plan during checkout.

Payment plans are offered through our trusted finance partners Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Zip, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. No-credit-needed leasing options through Acima may also be available at checkout.

Learn more about financing & leasing here.

Selected Option

Free shipping on this product

This item is eligible for return within 30 days of receipt

To qualify for a full refund, items must be returned in their original, unused condition. If an item is returned in a used, damaged, or materially different state, you may be granted a partial refund.

To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.

View our full returns policy here.

Availability: Only 1 left in stock, order soon!
Fulfilled by ThriftBooks-Phoenix
Arrives Nov 9 – Nov 11
Order within 13 hours and 20 minutes

Available payment plans shown during checkout

Protect Your Purchase

Easy claims online, fast replacements, no fees

Checking for protection plans...

Recently Viewed

At a glance

Condition
Used - Good
Format
Multi-Format March 25, 2014
Model
CRRN2345BR
Dimensions
0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 in; 8 oz
Genre
Drama
Language
Italian
Runtime
2 hours and 19 minutes

Description

For decades, journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the glittering nightlife of Rome. Since the legendary success of his only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city's literary and elite social circles. But on his sixty-fifth birthday, Jep unexpectedly finds himself taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the lavish nightclubs, parties, and cafes to find Rome itself, in all it's monumental glory: A timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty. Featuring sensuous cinematography, a lush score, and an award-winning central performance by the great Toni Servillo (GOMORRAH), this transporting experience by the brilliant Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (IL DIVO) is a breathtaking Fellini-esque tale of decadence and lost love.

Specs 15

Genre Drama
Format Blu-ray, Color, Multiple Formats, Subtitled, Widescreen
Contributor Carlo Buccirosso, Carlo Verdone, Franco Graziosi, Galatea Ranzi, Giorgio Pasotti, Iaia Forte, Isabella Ferrari, Ivan Franek, Massimo Popolizio, Pamela Villoresi, Paolo Sorrentino, Roberto Herlitzka, Sabrina Ferilli, Serena Grandi, Sonia Gessner, Toni Servillo
Language Italian
Runtime 2 hours and 19 minutes
MPAA rating NR (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 8 ounces
Item model number CRRN2345BR

Frequently asked questions

If you place your order now, the estimated arrival date for this product is: Nov 9 – Nov 11

Yes, absolutely! You may return this product for a full refund within 30 days of receiving it.

To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.

View our full returns policy here.

  • Klarna Financing
  • Affirm Pay in 4
  • Affirm Financing
  • Afterpay Financing
  • Zip Pay in 4
  • Financing through Apple Pay
  • Financing through Google Pay
Leasing options through Acima may also be available during checkout.

Learn more about financing & leasing here.

Similar Products

Top Amazon Reviews

It is really a Great Beauty
Collapsed in my armchair, with a few people around me, I have greatly enjoyed the latest masterpiece by Paolo Sorrentino and Tony Servillo whom it would not be an exaggeration to call the Coen brothers of Italian cinema, such is their harmony when they work together and permeate each other. I had an inkling that it was a great movie even when some friends stated: “ ... Yes, beautiful... a little slow… maybe Fellinian”. The countless references to the great Federico were more than due: not too many but perhaps too few. The story begins with the birthday of Gep Gambardella, in one of those parties in contemporary Rome that could be defined as a “cast by Fellini” as Woody Allen would say: a total mess, a jumble of undefined and screaming genres, suffering from delirium tremens fuelled by cocaine, heroin and alcohol, that added only bad taste to the orgies of Caligula. A mixture of Jurassic masks of cheesy humanity willing to sacrifice everything at the altar of appearance, in a mix of genders and genres, social classes, physical and mental horrors, where the only recognizable glue is an extreme form of kitsch. We see the princes Colonna of Calabria who are hired for a fee at dinners, the cardinals who should speak of God but dispense recipes of browned rabbits simmered with mint and fennel, a beautiful woman stripping off to pay for the treatment against the disease that will eat her up soon, an army of idlers busy doing nothing, intellectual women who have written the history of the Party, but who are best known for their work in the restrooms of the University. Everything is phoney, everything is fake, it is the festival of appearance, of boredom, of not doing anything. It is a long advertisement to smoking, drinking, drugs and especially to the display of many little and enormously monstrous egos in search of impossible identities. It is not possible to compare these scenes with those of three other historical films: ‘Roma’ and ‘La Dolce Vita’ (The Sweet Life) by the great Federico Fellini, and Woody Allen’s pathetic spot (To Rome with Love) justified only by the fact that he wasn’t given much money to shoot the film (but could he compete, on this field, with Fellini and Sorrentino? However, Woody Allen is still one of my favourite directors). Not to mention, however, even the beautiful ‘Caro Diario’ (Dear Diary) by Nanni Moretti and some scenes in the catacombs in Liliana Cavani’s ‘Al di là del bene e del male’ (Beyond Good and Evil). In ‘La dolce vita’ the great Fellini shows us a seemingly happy and radiant humanity in convertible sports cars and improbable night dives in the Trevi fountain: this is only the ‘desktop’ of a mythical world of wretches looking for a role but condemned to immense solitude. Evocative , sometimes wonderful, mysterious, age-old and always true magic – on the other hand – is Federico Fellini’s ‘Roma’, whose traces abound in ‘The great beauty’ by Paolo Sorrentino, that also gives us an extraordinary, perhaps the most valuable in absolute, database of images of the beautiful capital. It is surreal, dream-like, always depicted shortly after dawn, where the protagonist is finally alone to enjoy more than two thousand years of history, culture, art and civilization, having abandoned jugglers-monsters who pretend to live and strive to convince others that they are not dead yet. Tony Servillo “is reborn” on the day of his 65th birthday: he tries to ask questions, starts to have curiosities and looks in the higher ranks of the Church for an answer that cannot be given because the Cardinals are busy saying platitudes and dispense recipes. Then he goes back to his innocence when he was eighteen years old and deflowered by an angel girl of twenty who then left him. After that he could no longer pursue that dream and was lost in a worldliness of nothingness. Striking and impressive is the reference to a probable Mother Teresa, who is the only character who does not speak but climbs on her knees on the steps of a staircase that never ends: “I only eat a few roots because roots are important”. A great Sorrentino, certainly one of the greatest glories of contemporary cinema. Ciro Discepolo ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2014 by Ciro Discepolo
I'M AT AN AGE WHERE I RELATE TO MANY THOUGHTS THOUGHT HERE . . .
So much was superficial and partypartyparty in my 73-year life; So far. But Back Then everything I tried was vital, an adventure. All all-out positive reviews are right. This is totally a unique masterpiece (although reminiscent of Fellini), a film to give you much to thInk about. One's senior years offer experience/insights/time impetus to do just that. Viewed at younger ages; yes, a great mind-starter too. There is poem I recommend by William Wordsworth: IMITATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM EARLY CHIlDHOOD which I often revisit which conveys good thoughts to consider before or after viewing this Beauty: When you're young, experiment, make mistakes, go ahead, make a mess. Then in 'The Time of the Philosophic Mind' WILLIAM WORDWORTH COMPLETE WORKS ULTIMATE COLLECTION EDITION 300+ Works ALL poems, poetry, the major and minor works, rarities, prose works with ANNOTATIONS and BIOGRAPHY, it's a good time to refocus and reflect on all you'd done and think out all that is/was behind life which should be considered. Unsaid but subtly suggested in this fine motion picture is that suggestion. To finally make sense of what it was that made it so fine. Or not. I've seen this film a few time so far, and will see it again and again until I croak. There are many nods to Fellini and his more frantic but profound insights. In all, reconsidering life experiences helps jell it all. (In fact, a full-lived life is full of ups and downs, all offer lessons). This film is a fine catalyst. And in the meantime, beautiful, engaging, fascinating, bizarre, sumptuous, provocative. And highly enjoyable. Younger, older, whatever age you are, this is a movie which will move you and pull you into your thoughts of then and now. It's classic and profound. It's also a see and re-see and see again extravagant entertainment to keep learning from, thinking of. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2014 by Roy Clark
No film since "La Dolce Vita" has so captured the melancholy party theory of Roman life
"The Great Beauty" (Italian: La Grande Bellezza), directed by Paolo Sorrentino, is a lovely film, simultaneously self aware and unashamed in channeling several of the themes, stylistic flourishes and concerns previously identified with classic Italian films like "La Dolce Vita", "8 1/2", "L'Avventura" and so forth. It makes superb use of Rome in all its classical beauty as a location for mournful contemplations on lost youth, present life, pending mortality and the tribal malaise and pretenses of Rome's creative elite, all presented with lots of style and sizzle. How much a viewer finds the film to ultimately be either haunting and depressing or stimulating and entertaining may depend on how close to home the life concerns and reflections of the protagonist are to the viewer's own life. The "La Dolce Vita" like story of dissipated Roman creative posers and party animals confronting middle age, lost promise, failure and mortality, as though Marcello Mastroianni had never managed to transcend the final scenes of "La Dolce Vita", and had just grown old where we last saw him, allows for some wicked insights into and comments on Roman artistic life and an Italian film genre that is best summarized as "We are surrounded by so much beauty and greatness from the past, but we can only create empty beauty because we lack greatness, and can never achieve it again, and are tormented by the language and symbols of Catholicism, and are twisted into knots and self negation by intellectualizing about modernity. What else can we do but party? And, of course, we are melancholy at the emptiness of it all...". If the "The Great Beauty" has an over all insight, which is suggested by the introductory quote from Céline's "Journey to the End of the Night", it is that the characters have all, in ways big and small, succumbed to the delusion that they each can, through art and the intellectualized control of discourse and expression, control and master the illusion of life. Each character has been either broken, humbled or sobered by the effort, and has found that a great deal of what they could have enjoyed about the illusion has been lost to them in an effort to dominate it. The protagonist, Jep Gambardella, a once promising author with only one book of intellectualized social commentary to his credit, published very early in his career, after which he has settled into a long languorous slide to middle age as a "journalist" reporter on the arts in Rome, is sympathetic in that he has begun to grasp this underlying truth, and is working to reconcile himself to it. Many other characters in the film seem to have settled into the sort of dour connoisseurship and bored hostility usually associated with vendors in a Parisian flea market. The film abounds in vignettes and passing comments, many quite touching and some of them quite depressing, involving different characters who come and go from scene to scene, all pointing to the fury of now being held prisoner by the long shadow of the past. There is, for example, the elderly fallen aristocratic couple, living in the basement of their family's old palazzo, which is open to tourists to earn income, who rent themselves out as aristocratic dinner guests. On returning late at night from a party, where Jep had hired them to impersonate old rivals of their family, who were unavailable but whom Jep had wished to attend a dinner party at his apartment being held for a Mother Teresa like saint that Jep wishes to interview, the wife of the elderly couple slips into the old palazzo and inserts some coins into an audio guide and, sobbing, listens to an audio explanation of the palazzo and an idealized account of her life there as a child. And no Italian film aspiring to social comment would be complete without scenes that highlight the vanity and fallibility of the Catholic establishment. Perhaps the most telling, and memorable, at least for this viewer, line in "The Great Beauty" is spoken by Jep's hapless friend Romano, a seemingly talentless creative striver continuously rejected by Roman elites and audiences and continuously working to launch a fresh assault on the mountaintop with a new project. Romano, who angrily criticizes the basis of his artistic rejection, while masochistically humiliating himself in pursuit of a beautiful woman who can barely stand speaking to him, finally wins some approval by giving a performance piece where he grovels to the audience that he is "ordinary". Momentarily heartened by the applause he receives, even though the woman he craves walks out of the show as soon as he has finished, he soon decides to quit Rome altogether. He tells Jep of his brief success with the audience. Jep replies, with some genuine empathy for his friend, that it's wonderful that he received a positive response. But Romano tells Jep that he is leaving Rome, and returning to his small hometown, from whence he had come to Rome as a young man. "Rome has disappointed me", he tells Jep. This is really the insight moment for the film. The inability of someone, and that someone is almost everyone, to question their own consciousness, to in any way question or blame their own essential nature for their life, or to question their choice of an environment for themselves, much like the choice of a lover, that is toxic for them. Each person thinks they can transcend their environment and normalize their own consciousness through verbal definitions and success. Failing to do so, they blame the environment, or their own lack of effort, rather than their own consciousness and its need, like a drug addict, for that environment, no matter how toxic it may be to and devastating for them personally. Many a failed love affair travels the same path. Jep briefly considers that he too may have exhausted his life in Rome, and that he might return to where he came from, or go on to some where else. But, in the end, Jep's consciousness is Rome. He cannot leave what he is, or go back to something he was not. Jep has become his environment, no matter how empty its charms and denizens may have become for him. If he is disappointed in Rome, it is because he is disappointed in himself. The two are inseparable. He is haunted by "the great beauty" of a moment in youth when all seemed possible, if only through a then youthful ignorance of life and himself. He has no where to go now but onwards, an observer of his own essential nature. The film's Fellini like cinematic touches, which run on a steroids throughout, are in many ways busy work, lacking the organic relationship to the characters and film making that the same devices had in so many Fellini films. The film could have been made with much less overt style and have lost none of its essential nature nor any of its story impact. That is in a way a tribute to the strength of its conception and to the talents involved. All that said, the film is gorgeous. Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella is superb, the role of a lifetime for the actor, and all the casting and production are first rate. No other film since Fellini's has so captured the look, feel and vibe of Rome as both an open air museum and a grand movie set for the personal dramas and struggles of the creatively obsessed, jaded, cynical, malevolent and determined. The film plays like a wry dirge for an over ripe funeral procession. But it is a beautiful and, ultimately thoughtful reflection on the energy and openness of youth fading into a fragile but wise middle age. The place is intensely Rome The style is uniquely Italian, But the story is human and universal. RECOMMENDED. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2013 by APC Reviews
Beauty, decay, and nostalgia through the eyes of a Roman elite
We first meet Jep Gambardella, given life by the brilliant Tony Servillo (Gomorrah, Sorrentino’s Il Divo), at a Berlusconi-esque bacchanal. He has realized his youthful ambition, to be “the king of the high life” in the Eternal City. His home overlooks the Coliseum at its best angle. Rome is a giant candy jar for him—and much more: it is his stage, his dreamscape, his prison, his aging process reflected—it is a serpentine, cocaine-fueled conga train in the achingly early hours; a train leading nowhere. Once, many years ago, he wrote a successful novel, The Human Apparatus, whose title and contents are impossibly pretentious, according to a fellow socialite and frequent critic. Gambardella, secure in his wealth and social status, takes her prodding with affected, chuckling indifference; but when pushed further, he steps out of the role of gentleman and verbally eviscerates his critic, calmly exploding her narrative of her own personal and professional success. She leaves the gathering in tears. In another scene, Gambardella visits an old acquaintance who manages a strip club. The man, awed by the presence of such a famous public figure, rambles about his drug use and laments what a loser he is for having to stay awake until 6 a.m. every night at age seventy. Gambardella listens with attention and compassion. Later in the film, he meditates upon his own nocturnal routine, finding little of value in the endless soirées that turn inevitably into long, debauched affairs. Yet he is clearly attached to the lifestyle they represent. Sorrentino is showing us the emptiness of life as a certain kind of Roman elite. Tonally and stylistically, his film is entirely different from Martin Scorsese’s contemporary The Wolf of Wall Street, but both touch upon a certain deep vein of unhappiness and darkly comic absurdity in the lives of the amoral ultra-wealthy. Both directors are enamored of the spectacle of excess as an almost transcendent force. But the comparison should end there, out of respect for both films and their widely divergent ambitions. Is Gambardella’s life completely empty, debauched, irredeemable? No. He is a thoughtful man who endlessly wrestles to brook the contradictions within himself, to uncover the treasures in his past that will reassemble his shattered romantic soul, even as he remains suave, acerbic, self-deprecating, utterly unflappable in his public life. Through his eyes, and Sorrentino’s, we see the immense beauty of Rome: Rome as a place outside of time, in images of its Renaissance-era glories shrouded in darkness, of a drug-addled partygoer staring in awe at planes’ jet trails streaking through the pre-dawn sky; Rome as a thoroughfare bridging Europe and the tropics, suggested by the haunting apparition of a migrating flock of flamingos alighting on Gambardella’s terrace, and a giraffe (a magician’s prop) adorning the scene of a bitter parting; Rome as a place where a central paradox of Italy, and a timeless theme of humanity, plays out: the tension between the profane and the sacred, the conflicting desires to adore, celebrate, and idolize the human body and to hide it in shame, punish it, and deny its passions with spiritual poverty. There is a rich tapestry here, and moments of enduring poignancy. There are many superlative performances, among them Giovanna Vignola as Jep’s energetic editor, the closest thing he has to a peer and a companion; and Carlo Verdone as the significantly named Romano, a struggling artist and close friend of Jep’s. The soundtrack and score are their own presence, and provide much of the film’s emotional power in dynamic relation with the cinematography. There are vignettes, characters whose arcs last seconds and leave the viewer with bizarre and lingering impressions to interpret. This is a film fully realized, and, like the warm, ephemeral memories it calls up in Jep’s most vulnerable moments, like the ancient foundations of the Forum, its imprint will not fade fast. It will inspire its viewers to write books and make films: not motivated by jealousy at the singular accomplishment of its creators, but by its affirmation of the bounties of the world and the tragedies of our time. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2014 by Nicholas C. Triolo
How to Tell if This Masterpiece is For You!
There may be movies that provide more aesthetic bliss to the viewer (and listener) than The Great Beauty, but I doubt that any of them are as thematically rich and thought-provoking. And vice-versa! And this is appropriate, because, as one might guess from the title, one of the things this movie is about is the nature of beauty and our approach and response to it. But it's certainly not for all tastes. The biggest sticking point for some will be its lack of a conventional plot. There is no specific problem that confronts our hero, Jep, early in the first act and which gets resolved late in the third. It is simply the story of a man who, after his 65th birthday party, begins to gradually question his life--and even that is not telegraphed; it dawns on you slowly. You are simply watching a series of episodes in the life of a human being, and learning a great deal about him. If that is acceptable to you, then know these things: -- It's a visual and aural feast. The beautiful city of Rome, and the faces of a large ensemble of character actors, are lensed with, well, great beauty. And this is accompanied by a soundtrack that includes some of the most soul-stirring modern music, such as David Lang's "I Lie" and Arvo Part's setting of "My Heart's in the Highlands." -- Not only that, but the editing style is purely cinematic, designed not to just tell a story, but to create juxtapositions that startle, soothe, illuminate. -- It rewards repeated viewings. In fact, there are some things that will puzzle you the first time, that you'll only make sense of ten minutes after they happen (including the most important event in the movie, which happens offstage), and when you see it again, what happened will not only be clear to you, but the reason for the initial obscurity (to be true to Jep's emotional life) will be clear. -- It is drowning in symbols, but none of them are simple and programmatic (X stands for Y); instead they are multiply suggestive. Some of the action, for instance, is portrayed as taking place in spaces that are obviously other than where they must be (the usual substitution is some exquisite locale, full of open space, for someplace mundane and cramped). That's a look inside Jep's head. -- It has extraordinary thematic richness. I told a friend that it was "about everything." I can imagine an entire book devoted to exploring what it says about the human condition, and how it says it, and would not bet against that actually happening someday. (I've already spent the better part of a whole day writing about it at IMDB, after seeing it a second time.) Of course, it is not about everything equally, so here's a list of some of its main concerns: how memory haunts and shapes us, the unknowable in life, whether the world (and art) should be analyzed or just experienced, whether viewing art (in the broad sense), and hence living our lives, should be an active or passive experience. -- After two viewings and some thought, it starts to reveal more plot than it seems to have had at first. There is, after all, a story here, involving Jep's relationships with two women, one in his past, one in the present. (It's not obviously a story the first time, any more than anything in your life is, except in retrospect.) So, yes, add the nature of love to that list. -- It is touching, mostly melancholy, but ultimately hopeful. The ending, in fact, is very quietly transcendent. -- It is, in places, very, very funny. In my admittedly insanely fine-tuned ranking of my favorite films, The Great Beauty originally clocked in at #64. It jumped to #35 on its second viewing, and in my original version of this review I said I "could easily imagine it gaining another 10 places." In fact, on my third viewing it vaulted to #16. This is a movie for cinephiles to cherish. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2014 by Eric M. Van
Visually beautiful but tedious
The screenplay seems subtle and excellent at first, but then keeps pushing the same themes again and again (e. g. decadence, power, people using people, "where's the truth?") without modulation. So after a while, it gets tedious.
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2021 by Lisa Ruddick
I Found this Wow of a Film on a List of Spectacular Movies You Probably Haven't Seen (High Existence)
I made the mistake of watching it near bedtime, and there’s no intermittent dozing for this one. So I started from the beginning today, uninterrupted, and became a huge fan. One caveat: In the first go-round, because it was so different, I felt a bit confused and, maybe even out of my depth, not really getting it. This is an extravagant film with in-your-face, opulent imagery, dynamic music and dance, and glammed-out characters. It’s something of a grand kinetic art installation. And it begins with no dialogue. The best approach, I think, is to suspend judgment and allow the uniqueness and exuberance to take you on a virtual ride. When the dialogue begins, we learn all about Jep Gambardella, brilliantly played by Toni Servillo. He’s a journalist, who wrote one minimally-acclaimed novel 40 years ago. He views himself as an intellectual and singular arbiter of good taste, and has played hard in Rome’s society party life for at least that long. He’s immensely charismatic, and his peers pay rapt attention, and so do we, to his every word. He’s disdainful of the societal poseurs, the fakers, who reference Proust, and self-tan and botox, and he causes folks to sweat a bit when he offers up his unsolicited analysis of their lives. Especially since turning 65, he wants more. He has existential questions. He’s more impatient with dishonesty, arrogance and supercilious posturing, and uses his ascerbic tongue to cut through the “blah blah blah” (as he calls it). He finds his down-to-earth stripper gf infinitely better company than any upper-crustie type. He now seeks out spiritual answers from religious figures, and beautifully interwoven in the storyline, are images of nuns in flowing white habits, often singing, providing really interesting counterpoint to the flamboyant partygoers and their music. The acting is excellent, across the board. The film is a striking display of first-rate, creative cinematography (Luca Bigazzi) and editing (Cristiano Travaglioli). The music (Lele Marchitelli) is wide-ranging, multi-modal, from boldly, sensually percussive, accompanying multitudes of dancers in all formations, to gently, sweetly transportive, sometimes melancholy, liturgical. Hardy praise to the production design, art, and special effects departments, and to the many other creative contributors. And best of all, to the amazing Paolo Sorrentino, who directed the film and co-authored it with Umberto Contarello. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2018 by New Orleans gal
Unspeakable beauty, heavy heart
Sorrentino's The Great Beauty is a lovely mix of Mediterranean joie de vivre and Nordic existentialism that leaves the audience drenched in beauty and medium-heavy with melancholia. The main character, Jep (Toni Servillo), is a man of deep feeling, immersed in the timeless splendor of Roman imagery. But this is Rome at its most existential -- no bustling crowds, only Jep walking the pre-dawn streets past cafes and squares eerily empty of people. The only crowds we see float above the streets -- insulated rooftop parties of desperate and lonely jetsetters jamming into train dances to techno-pop music. This is Jep’s socialite crowd, which oddly elicits in the audience both heart-felt contempt and heart-felt sympathy. The setting reinforces the painful doubleness of Jep and his circle. The grand architecture, the magnificent sculpture and gardens, the sublime soundtrack, Jep’s Roman world is filled with mind-boggling aesthetic beauty at every turn, and yet it oddly lacks the beauty of human contact, human meaning. The film’s continuing sideshow of performance artists grabs at this lack ever more obsessively as it fails to generate the human warmth it seeks. As he looks back over his life on his 65th birthday, Jep himself seems intermittently attuned to all this, as scenes of heartrending poignancy pop up arbitrarily and just as arbitrarily fade into the arc of the narrative. Jep has no regrets for the socialite life he’s lived, despite an awareness of its general emptiness. In his particular case, the emptiness is symbolized by the fact that he could never get back to his second novel. One could argue that the turning point for Jep – and this film is ambiguous about this as it is about everything – is the entrance of the Santa (Giusi Merli), an old woman destined for Catholic sainthood. She is frankly an old blubbering mess and her adoration a satire on church idiocy. And yet she is more than that. Everything she says can be taken two ways. Is it senile inanity or profound genius? The best example is when she tries to tell Jep why she lives on bitter roots. “Because,” she stutters, half-comatose, as if she can’t get her brain around the simplest question. And she seems to relinquish the effort with a dismissive remark that “roots are important.” It seems a throwaway line. And yet she does painstakingly climb the Spanish steps on her knees, however ridiculous that task might seem, in contrast to Jep’s decades-long inability to start his second novel. And then Jep does return to his roots, at least in the space of imagination. He re-imagines his sexual awakening with a teenage girl on the beach, re-imagines a world so naïve, so absurd, that full, rich human contact was possible. And that, we are led to believe amidst the lyrical beauty of the film’s final images, is the beginning of his second novel. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2014 by Gary Gautier
How it works
Checking for best price...