Coppola’s Youth Without Youth premieres at Rome Film Festival

Posted by fanshawe

October 20, 2007

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Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s first film since the 1997 thriller The Rainmaker, premiered Saturday night at the Rome Film Festival. Based on a short story by Romanian author Mircea Eliade, the film begins in Romania capital Bucharest on the eve of World War Two and tells the story of a lonely old Romanian linguistics professor, played by British veteran Tim Roth, who has devoted his life to scholarly study of language and the way it shapes human cognitive processes, and is given a second chance to complete his life work as well as to reconnect with his lost love when he gets struck by lightning and miraculously becomes a young man. Not only is he given youth, echoing Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, but also an “abnormal intellectual ability:” he only has to run his hand over a book in order to assimilate its contents, a twist that propels the Faustian tale and sets the protagonist on his metaphysical course in the film. His newly acquired ability piques Nazis’ interest and Roth’s character subsequently finds himself on the run.

Appearing alongside Tim Roth are Romania-born German actress Alexandra Maria Lara and Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, both known from the controversial 2004 film The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich, and the Jason Bourne trilogy star Matt Damon makes a surprise cameo.

As the story unfolds, the professor gets an unsympathetic doppelganger who embodies the scholarly ambition in him and his internal conflict - being haunted by memories of a girl he lost, played by Lara, and his desire to complete his work – comes to the forefront when he meets a woman who looks exactly like the one from his past and speaks only Sanskrit after surviving a car crash.

The film employs elements of different genres – drama, romance, spy thriller, magic realism - and the ultimate blend has resulted in contrasting reviews after the press screening earlier today. Emanuel Levy calls the film a “significant event par excellence,” while the Variety critic complains about it being “overly talky” and unable to “connect with its characters.” What most reviews, positive or negative, do agree on is that Youth Without Youth is an ambitious, layered film and a significant departure from Coppola’s previous work.The Oscar winning maker of such cult films as The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now and The Outsiders has said that he feels he has a lot in common with the movie’s protagonist, referring to his struggle with Megalopolis, the screenplay for his own big cinematic project.

Aware of the fact that audiences might find the complexity of Youth Without Youth a bit challenging, the director has expressed hope that the first viewing will at least compel people to see the movie a second time, saying: “I only ask you to think that my film was interesting.”

The trailer is available on YouTube.