letig1994

La notte is usually said to be the second of the so-called "existential tetralogy" together with L'Avventura, L'eclisse and The Red Desert.

Like L'Avventura, La Notte as well has a central theme a love story, but a story of a couple (wonderfully played by Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau) going through a deep crisis, that has almost come to an end. From the emptiness of their house, we move to a likewise empty party. The night setting is what allows the characters in the film to move away from the borders of their personality and degenerate, do things that the night itself can hide and that keeps for itself.

In fact, when the sun rises, everything is much calmer and the light shows things in a different way, even the couple's relationship. Like Antonioni once said during an interview: "you don't need much to collapse, to surrender"… it's easy to forget about the things that surround us.

Antonioni always reminds us that talking isn't necessary, that silence is a big lesson we can learn from.

I honestly found this movie very touching and delicate. It is delicate in the way it treats difficult subjects as sexuality and the discovery of one's identity in an hostile period. The fact that it is a true story makes the whole movie even more involving.

I don't think the film is perfect - but the acting, cinematography, the screenplay are absolutely amazing. I especially loved the middle part - where all the characters try to find a way out of the problem and when for the first time they seem to be facing a fracture between them.

I thought it had a great power on people even though it doesn't seem to have had the effect I was expecting (at least during the premiere in Venice).

Eddie Redmayne hasn't had enough of his Oscar and I wish him all the best for 2016!

Once again, Paolo Sorrentino proves to be a master of cinema and doesn't disappoint. The story is set in an apparently isolated place: a luxury hotel in the mountains of Switzerland inhabited mainly by artists and people from the show business (curious the reference to Maradona, thanked by Sorrentino during his Oscar acceptance speech).

Youth is a tender film in both the characters and the themes: growing old and the fears related to it are common to all men. Fred (Michael Caine) is an old man who still has a lot going on in his life: he has to deal with friendship, love, family and his career. The only thing that makes him different from the younger people surrounding him is that he is aware of memory. It is through memory that he has lost and that he tries to regain his identity. Everyone in the film is in search for identity: the contrast between how people see them and what they want to be seen as.

The screenplay is complex and intense and for this reason sometimes hard to follow. I loved the irony Sorrentino always puts in his movies: through surrealism he is capable of expressing humanity in a simple but yet beautiful way. All the cast delivers great performances and cinematography is absorbing as always. Sorrentino is a director of places: no matter if it is the Eternal City of Rome or an hotel immersed in nature - he is able to capture all the beauty of it.

What the film teaches us, in the end, is that we are what we do - so, I'd add, it's better if we do what we are - but we are nothing without love, which is the driving force of humanity.