Réalisation:
Paolo SorrentinoPhotographie:
Luca BigazziMusique:
Lele MarchitelliActeurs·trices:
Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Carlo Buccirosso, Isabella Ferrari, Giorgio Pasotti, Franco Graziosi, Serena Grandi (plus)VOD (3)
Résumés(1)
Rome dans la splendeur de l'été. Les touristes se pressent sur le Janicule : un Japonais s'effondre foudroyé par tant de beauté. Jep Gambardella – un bel homme au charme irrésistible malgré les premiers signes de la vieillesse – jouit des mondanités de la ville. Il est de toutes les soirées et de toutes les fêtes, son esprit fait merveille et sa compagnie recherchée. Journaliste à succès, séducteur impénitent, il a écrit dans sa jeunesse un roman qui lui a valu un prix littéraire et une réputation d'écrivain frustré : il cache son désarroi derrière une attitude cynique et désabusée qui l'amène à poser sur le monde un regard d'une amère lucidité. Sur la terrasse de son appartement romain qui domine le Colisée, il donne des fêtes où se met à nu "l'appareil humain" – c'est le titre de son roman – et se joue la comédie du néant. Revenu de tout, Jep rêve parfois de se remettre à écrire, traversé par les souvenirs d'un amour de jeunesse auquel il se raccroche, mais y parviendra-t-il ? Surmontera-t-il son profond dégoût de lui-même et des autres dans une ville dont l'aveuglante beauté a quelque chose de paralysant... (Pathé Films)
(plus)Critiques (11)
Fellini for the new millennium, or an ode to Rome and the life of the campaign city’s upper crust packaged in a portrait of an old dandy looking back on his own life while raising question about the essence of artistic creation, creative distinction and faith. With its style straddling the line between parable, dreams and magical realism, The Great Beauty inevitably evokes the Fellini classics La Dolce Vita, 8½ and Roma, but it does not in any way copy or plagiarise them. It just addresses the same themes in the same spirit, though with respect to the age and misanthropic nature of the main character, it focuses on different elements and values.
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Des épisodes sur la vie de la haute société romaine qui, en eux-mêmes, incarnent le glamour de la réalisation cinématographique. Joyau esthétique, La Grande Belleza est abstrait non seulement sur le plan visuel, mais dans son contenu également. Il n’est pas possible de tout absorber en un seul visionnage, tant les pensées et réflexions exprimées sont nombreuses et demandent d’être vues plus d’une fois. Et même si vous n’absorbez pas tout, vous n’en serez pas moins subjugué par l’ambiance et l’élégance du film, sans parler de l’harmonie entre la caméra et le montage, qui est juste incroyable. Sorrentino est un extraterrestre. La soirée disco au début de La Grande Belleza l’emporte sur l’entièreté de Gatsby le Magnifique !
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J’hésite entre « un beau grand ennui » et « une ennuyeuse beauté ». C’est que je ne partage pas l’enthousiasme général de la planète. La Grande Belleza repose sur trois piliers : l’excellente prestation de Toni Servillo, un festin pour les yeux et la fameuse scène de la soirée qui dure quelques minutes au début. Moi, j’aime bien les histoires fortes et, ici, il n’y en a pas. On nous met en appétit avec quelques thèmes, mais en substance, il ne se passe pratiquement rien pendant les deux heures. Si j’étais dans le jury et que j’avais mon mot à dire sur toutes les récompenses que ce film pourrait recevoir ou pas, je n’hésiterais pas un seul instant et voterais plutôt pour La Chasse. J’ai déjà regardé la scène d’ouverture quatre fois et me la repasserai encore, mais pour le reste, je ne rejoins pas la majorité et ne compte pas perdre mon temps avec l’Italie, Rome et le surestimé Sorrentino.
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“È solo un trucco.” Sorrentino picks up where Fellini left off. The exchange of views between Jep and Wilhelmina the girls from the convent school, separated from the protagonist by a screen, is strikingly reminiscent of the ending of La Dolce Vita. Whereas Marcello is only just entering the world of Rome’s upper crust, Jep Gambardella has already been there and done that, and (later) understood that authentic life is lived on the other side, not only in the spatial sense, but also in the temporal sense – the protagonist takes refuge from the all-pervasive emptiness in memories of his childhood, when he was still unknowledgeable, when he was only just becoming aware. If his wandering as a unknowledgeable flâneur, which we are witnesses to, teaches him anything, it’s the fact that we cannot deny ourselves or our own story. ___ The most spiritually valuable moments of Jep’s profane existence are not the direct confrontation with religious symbols, but encounters with innocence (girls, lovers kissing) and with passing time (the time-lapse photography project) and brief glimpses into reality, which is just as fleeting as beauty and love. A very brief encounter with Fanny Ardant, who elegantly carries with her the characters from every film in which she has appeared, brings about an hour-long visit to a church. During these moments, Jep perhaps realises that though he may know everyone and can go anywhere, the values that are worth striving for remain difficult for him to attain. ___ The Great Beauty is a film of a time and society without narrative potential. All of the stories had already been told, so what remains is only the recycling of familiar situations and mechanical alteration of the actors, roles and props. Time and movement became irrelevant. Despite that, Sorrentino managed to make a film that pulsates with life, though it is about a world that rejects two basic characteristics of cinema and also about a life that has no direction. ___ Thanks to the ceaseless movement of the camera, the surprising alternation of shot types (the various ways in which they are linked would be worthy of a separate analysis), the placement of unexpected objects in the mise-en-scéne and the lively soundtrack, which doesn’t distinguish between Bizet and Italian pop, The Great Beauty never stops flowing and doesn’t let you leave the cinema until the house lights come up. Only later you can start to process the implied ideas and fill in the empty space that has been spread out before you. 85%
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A great beauty. Goosebumps during about one third of the massive two and a half hour run, and I sat uncomfortably on the stairs. (KVIFF 48)
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A lot of ideas, a whole bunch of opinions and a brutal deal of philosophizing. And on top of that you get a visual side that will make many an eye melt away. I accept all that, but at the same time it wasn’t an easy movie for me to handle the first time. I will definitely watch it again… someday. But now please give me a moment to fully realize what it was that I actually saw. The Great Beauty is a crazy critique of a society. A critique of fleetingness, arrogance, vanity… and some of the scenes were so crazy I don’t think I will ever get them out of my head.
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Crisis as a pose, beauty as the only principle of construction. Sometimes it works wonderfully (the introduction and the conclusion), whilst other times it's empty, ostentatious, unnecessarily eloquent and awkwardly theatrical. Even the biting irony is only about halfway there. Sorrentino is an excellent director, but unlike Fellini's "Roman frescoes", which are internally experienced and in every chord accurate, he realizes the idea of a nostalgic protagonist in crisis much less convincingly, but all the more heinously and loudly. A film that plays at being a classic just like the protagonist plays at being a blessed man of the world. Sorrentino had already made films that are an order of magnitude better, but also less affectionate.
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We've seen this before. The Great Beauty is a clear tribute to the famous Fellini film La Dolce Vita, and the comparison with this film is obvious and made me return to Fellini's probably most famous film years later. I consider Paolo Sorrentino to be the best contemporary Italian director who can create fantastic experiences with images and actors. As for the form, I think he reliably surpassed Fellini, as Sorrentino is truly brilliant in that aspect. However, when it comes to content, Fellini reliably defeated Sorrentino. I saw beautifully shot images, and decadent scenes from the lives of today's Italian intellectuals and those who eagerly play that role, but overall, I don't really know what Sorrentino wanted to convey to me. I appreciate the soundtrack and I repeatedly played the song "Far l'amore" at home and enjoyed it. The party scenes seem like a great music video for the song, but while watching the film, I was rather bored, and my resulting overall impression of 50% and 3 weak stars represent some kind of compromise in relation to the work, about which, honestly, I don't know what to think. Paolo Sorrentino can do much better, and when he wants to, he can also convey something. In my case, he didn't succeed with this film...
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A writer's block, a magical city, beautiful women and a (dis)appetite for a wild social life, or the Fellini of modern times. It's not easy to immediately collect all your thoughts and fully embrace the elaborate metaphorical play in which Sorrentino has wrapped a story about the present-day fate of old age and loneliness, but it's all too easy to like this play and be swept away by it. The charming production design itself, packed with beautiful images, flawlessly composed music and civil dialogues, is a delight to watch, not to mention the perfect actors and the precisely dosed insight that has always belonged to life, and therefore to this film. And it's uncanny how similar the emotions of the film sound compared to the famous 8 1/2, fifty years earlier. People don’t change and Italian filmmakers are proof of that. :) 80%
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A very interesting film that somewhat pretends to be a contemplation on aging, partly an insight into the realm of the wealthy and their fast-paced lives where age doesn't matter. But it's actually an existential drama about the place of a person in the world. It doesn't matter who you are, because if you don't realize what you really want, what you're doing, where you're heading, your life will lose its meaning. You won't have a goal. Yet it is possible to live like this. The film may be a bit too long and dragged out in some passages, but especially the first half offers truly unique, original, and definitely unexpected scenes. The balcony scene is almost surrealistically magical.
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Only Paolo Sorrentino can meditate on life like this. To understand The Great Beauty, one must have matured and have experienced some things in life. It's hard to find the right words here, as one's own experiences are not transferable. After watching the movie for the second time, I perceive everything much more deeply. Perhaps the third viewing will really break me apart... (85%)
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Annonces