With echoes of Fellini’s The Sweet Life (La Dolce Vita, 1960), the film The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza), shown at this year’s Cannes film festival, evokes cinematic admiration and makes one wish it would never end, while leading film critics tend to refer to it as the most momentous film of the festival.
Jep Gambardella (actor Toni Servillo) is an indolent and disenchanted 65-year-old writer and journalist, coasting on his sole successful novel published nearly fifty years ago. A grey-haired man of property, an intellectual and a lion of eccentric high society gatherings, he is the Rome’s king of the socialites, expert in courting in a gentlemanly manner and laudably extending condolences at funerals. Sounds cynic? It probably does. Yet, deep in the heart, Jep is a romantic idealist and dreamer, engulfed in the swirl of the great beauty filled with vacuity and vanity.
His penthouse suite overlooking the Coliseum is a regular place of gatherings for the bohemia and Rome’s elite. Jep finds himself to be an observer of a parade of the prominent and vacuous elite raging in never-ending parties and modern art performances he is a part of. Surrounded by a perpetual flurry, the man ponders why he did not write a second novel for several decades and tries to solve the agonising dilemma of his personal life.
Glorifying the beauty of the eternal city, the heady film is full of Fellini-esque grotesque, critique of high society vacuity, and almost caricatured party shots mixed with intellectual discussions. This certainly the most beautiful film opens in cinema theatres in Latvia already from 15 November.
Cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verden, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Italian language with latvian and russian subtitles.
Tells the story of two sets of parents who decide to have a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a schoolyard brawl.
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly
Directed by: Roman Polanski
Ali finds himself with a five-year-old child on his hands. Sam is his son, but he hardly knows him. Homeless, penniless and friendless, Ali takes refuge with his sister Anna in Antibes, in the south of France. There things improve immediately. She puts them up in her garage, she takes the child under her wing and the weather is glorious. Ali, a man of formidable size and strength, gets a job as a bouncer in a nightclub. He comes to the aid of Stephanie during a nightclub brawl. Aloof and beautiful, Stéphanie seems unattainable, but in his frank manner Ali leaves her his phone number anyway. Stephanie trains orca whales at Marineland. When a performance ends in tragedy, a call in the night again brings them togtether.
When Ali sees her next, Stephanie is confined to a wheel chair: she has lost her legs and quite a few illusions.
Ali’s direct, unpitying physicality becomes Stéphanie’s lifeline, but Ali too is transformed by Stéphanie’s tough resilience. And Stephanie comes alive again. As their stories intersect and diverge, they navigate a world where strength, beauty, youth and blood are commodities—but where trust, truth, loyalty and love cannot be bought and sold, and courage comes in many forms.
Martin, an ex-Parisian well-heeled hipster passionate about Gustave Flaubert who settled into a Norman village as a baker, sees an English couple moving into a small farm nearby. Not only are the names of the new arrivals Gemma and Charles Bovery, but their behavior also seems to be inspired by Flaubert's heroes.
Movie and French with subtitles in Latvian and Russian.
Meeting in a nightclub, Tony and Georgio swiftly become lovers even though he seems too good to be true. After skiing accident, Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious skiing accident. Dependent of medical staff and painkillers, she takes the time to remember the tumultuous love story she lived with Georgio.
Movie and French with subtitles in Latvian and Russian.