Without straining the imagination too hard, you can see them in their younger years: Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, trans-Atlantic drinking buddies out on the town and chasing trouble. And so, as old men, the actors make an odd kind of sense paired off as old friends in Youth. Caine stars as Fred Ballinger, a retired composer and conductor who has sunk into pleasant apathy; Keitel is Mick Boyle, a filmmaker trying to develop a script for the film that might be his last. He hopes it will be “a masterpiece, my testament.”
The two friends are enjoying the salubrious comforts of an exclusive Swiss resort, complete with daily massages and saunas. They compare their urinary functions and try to remember the lover they may have shared 60 years ago. Neither man was successfully married. Mick’s son Julian (Ed Stoppard), an utter dolt, announces that he’s divorcing Fred’s daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz). Adding to the undercurrent of drama, Fred must endure the usual criticism mounted by children of creative men—he was wrapped up in his art and oblivious to his offspring. His compositions were his real children.
The English-language film by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino suffers from artiness for its own sake, including odd juxtapositions and awkward segues that serve no purpose but say that life can be dull—and then it’s over. The best moments are spent between Caine and Keitel, as Fred and Mick recall the faces they no longer clearly remember, the voices they can no longer hear and a past that has become a lost continent, vaster than the future.
Youth
3 stars
Michael Caine
Harvey Keitel
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
R
