New York Times Manohla Dargis Says Sorrentino Could Win At Cannes

From Jostling for Position in Last Lap at Cannes

by Mahohla Dargis

“The Great Beauty” (“La Grande Bellezza”), an outlandishly entertaining hallucination from the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, will also have a sustained life on the festival circuit and should eventually make it to American theaters. A contemporary riff on “La Dolce Vita,” among other cinematic and literary touchstones, it stars a fantastic Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella, a Rome journalist. After enjoying early success as a novelist, Jep has settled into — or perhaps for — an existence of rotating pleasures and unending parties, ravishingly beautiful women and lavishly prepared meals. A sensualist of rarefied taste and sensibility, he leads a life that is at once empty and overflowing and that, much like Mr. Sorrentino’s fluid moving cameras and people, moves to the insistent beat of life.