Welcome to Cannes Fortnight at Casa Brandon. Last held in 2022, this year the focus is on watching movies by 2024 Cannes directors who are completely unfamiliar to me, such as Sorrentino. For a while there, every couple years he released a new must-see film (Il Divo, This Must Be The Place, Youth), which I would never see, and The Great Beauty is the Criterion-crowned consensus favorite.

Initially more avant-garde than expected. I thought the sound mixing in first scene was cool – we hear a choir but no dialogue or sound effects as some minor tourist drama plays out – but it turns out the scene was mixed normally and I had the headphones plugged in halfway. Paolo’s muse Toni Servillo plays an unproductive writer who knows everyone in Rome and can go everywhere attending all their parties. So we get to go everywhere, making me wonder who is Sorrentino that he has such access. It’s a splendidly expensive-looking movie if nothing else. Seems to be an attempted remake of La Dolce Vita – for me, Fellini’s least interesting movie, so this was an improvement.