The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza)

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The Italian representative in the Best Foreign Language pool of nominees from writer-director Paolo Sorrentino (This Must Be The Place and Il Divo) sets its sights on Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a worldly lover of the Roman nightlife who must confront a secret of sorts from his past following his 65th birthday. This dramedy captures dawning maturity of a man caught up in hedonistic arrested development and the discovery of the true and enduring beauty of life itself. The Great Beauty seems poised to swing with degrees of wit and philosophical reflection completely lacking in the broad comic hijinks of Last Vegas, a typical Hollywood variant, which, to be fair, was surprisingly more nuanced than it had any right to be. Opens Feb. 7 at Esquire Theatre. (NR) Not screened in time for review