Sorrentino's heady, vivid yet wearily melancholic musing on midlife crisis submerges you in sumptuousness until you emerge, blinking, as if from some impossibly glamorous party.

Wild set-pieces and rueful observations are the stock in trade of this Italian film by one of the modern masters of cinema, Paolo Sorrentino.

I can't remember when a film last gave me such a surge of pure pleasure -- no, outright euphoria -- as The Great Beauty.

It would be a disservice to consider this generous film a mere homage. [Full review in Spanish]