The Great Beauty

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino

(Not rated)

****

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This “very entertaining” Italian import is essentially a variation on La Dolce Vita, said Jon Frosch in TheAtlantic.com. Like Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, it provides an uncompromising portrait of Rome’s elite, which in 2013 means “lavish, champagne-soaked, techno-thumping parties” and mornings after that “echo with regret.” Our guide through this decadent world is an aging womanizer and celebrity journalist who learns early on in the film that his first love has died, said David Thomson in The New Republic. The news changes him: He schmoozes less at parties, and wanders the streets appreciating his city’s beauty. When star Toni Servillo smokes a cigarette, “he inhales all of life,” personal ups and downs included. “There are moments of melancholy” in this “wildly inventive ode” to personal sensibility, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. “Mostly though, there is beauty reborn,” as the director’s cameras “fly through Rome, knocking the dust off the city’s monuments,” and reminding us that wherever we are, “we are only passing through” and “had better make the most of it.”