Journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel he has been a permanent fixture in the citys literary and social circles but when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries and looking past the extravagant nightclubs parties and cafs to find Rome in all its glory a timeless landscape of absurd exquisite beauty.
Review
To say that La Grande Bellezza overflows with references to La Dolce Vita the beacon which still sheds its nostalgic light upon Rome's nightlife and myth is an understatement. In this regard originality is certainly not a quality that one is likely to find in that film. Similarly to its model La Grande Bellezza's main character is a middleaged man who has renounced his literary ambitions so as to revel in Rome's superficial jet set this allows him to hold a privileged position as both witness and accomplice to the Ȯternal city"'s contradictions. Likewise Jep Gambardella is both detached and passionate cynical and elegiac about his city and its inhabitants much like apparently the film's director. The film basically consists of a series of apparently disconnected episodes in Jep's roaming around the Italian capital. These episodes are suffused with a breathtaking sense of beauty and awe (yes you will fall in love with Rome when you see this!) yet these scenes are systematically mitigated contrapuntally by grotesque interludes satirical of Rome's religious artistic or social elite much as in Fellini's film. In short for me Sorrentino's film is the dream offspring updated and highly stylized of the giant it never ceases to pay homage to.