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.
One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows-Primo Levi. The Oscar®-winning Helen Mirren will introduce audiences to Anne Frank's story through the words in her diary. The set will be her room in the secret refuge in Amsterdam, reconstructed in every detail by set designers from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan. Anne Frank this year would have been 90 years old. Anne's story is intertwined with that of five Holocaust survivors, teenage girls just like her, with the same ideals, the same desire to live: Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Helga Weiss and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Their testimonies alternate with those of their children and grandchildren.
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
A very handsome man finds the love of his life, but he suffers an accident and needs to have his face rebuilt by surgery after it is severely disfigured.
Naples. Nicola and his friends are fifteen years old. They want to make money, buy designer clothes and brand new scooters. They play with weapons and ride around the city to take power in the district of Sanità. They love each other like family, they don't fear prison nor death, knowing their only chance is to risk everything, now. They experience war with the irresponsibility of adolescence, but their criminal activities soon lead them to the irreversible sacrifice of love and friendship.
Inspired by classic film noir, "The Poison Rose", an ex-football star turned PI, who's got a soft spot for a lady in distress. He takes on a routine missing persons case which slowly reveals itself to be a complex interwoven web of crimes, suspects and dead bodies. When he discovers his long lost daughter is the number one suspect, he races a ticking clock to save her, solve the murders, and uncover the town's dirty secrets.
Laura, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her two children to attend her sister's wedding. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.
Paolo Sorrentino skewers Italian politics in this satirical, profane, and imaginative fictionalization of controversial Italian tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi and his inner circle.
On the day in 1940 that Italy enters the war, two things happen to the 12-year-old Renato: he gets his first bike, and he gets his first look at Malèna. She is a beautiful, silent outsider who's moved to this Sicilian town to be with her husband, Nico. He promptly goes off to war, leaving her to the lustful eyes of the men and the sharp tongues of the women. During the next few years, as Renato grows toward manhood, he watches Malèna suffer and prove her mettle. He sees her loneliness, then grief when Nico is reported dead, the effects of slander on her relationship with her father, her poverty and search for work, and final humiliations. Will Renato learn courage from Malèna and stand up for her?
A darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.
Life seems to be looking up for shy and withdrawn Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) when he is coaxed to return to his childhood home with the promise of a job...in the mundane world of copy setting. Wildly creative, his fanciful and sometimes disturbing dream life constantly threatens to usurp his waking world.
Stephane is quickly drawn to his neighbor Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), whose imagination easily matches his own. As their relationship blossoms, the confidence Stephane exudes in his dreams begins bleeding over into his real life. Unable to bear the prospect of a waking world without Stephanie's love, and with no satisfying solutions coming out of his dream world, Stephane faces a dilemma, which the science of sleep may not help him solve.
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou
Directed by Michel Gondry
The life of freshly divorced San Francisco writer Frances Mayes is about to take an unexpected but much needed upturn. Trying to shake Frances out of her lethargy and post - breakup funk, her friend Patti offers Frances a gift that she hopes will do the trick: a ten day trip to Tuscany, in the heart of Italy. And right here, under the Tuscan sun, the unlikeliest thing happens: Frances impulsively buys a run - down villa named "Bramasole" - Literally, "something that yearns for the sun" - and in so doing plunges hereself into a brand new life. As she embraces the local ways and devotes hereself to the restoration of her new home, Frances finds hereself close bonds with the people around her and slowly rediscovering the pleasures of laughter, friendship and romance. Even as she stumbles forward on her uncertain journey, one thing becomes clear: in life, there are second chances.