- Date: 13 June -

Indifferent and seductive, Rome offers itself up to the astonished eyes of tourists; it is summer and the city shines with a beauty that is elusive and definitive. Jep Gambardella is 65 and his character emanates a charm that time has not ravaged. He is a successful journalist who flits between culture and the high life in a Rome that never ceases being a sanctuary of wonder and greatness. Behind the decadence and decay of reality, the city continues to preserve a hidden and sometimes desperate beauty.

But The Great Beauty—in Italian, more musically and abstractly titled La grande bellezza—sees Sorrentino ramping up his customary excess and taking it genuinely into the realms of the sublime. - Film Comment