La Grande Bellezza aka The Great Beauty Sonata Premiere

This visually spectacular film, which carries echoes of the classic works of Federico Fellini, was enthusiastically received by festival audiences and critics upon its premiere. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called it 'an outlandishly entertaining hallucination,' and according to Variety's Jay Weissberg it's an 'astonishing cinematic feast.' Journalist Jep Gambardella (the dazzling Toni Servillo, Il Divo and Gomorrah) has been a permanent fixture in Rome's literary and social circles since the legendary success of his one and only novel. Armed with a roguish charm, he has seduced his way through the city's lavish night life for decades, but when his 65th 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 cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.