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Parents' Guide to

The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)

By Renee Longstreet, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Exceptional, mature film dazzles, offers haunting insights.

Movie NR 2013 142 minutes
The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

Modern-day Rome is the setting for Paolo Sorrentino's THE GREAT BEAUTY, the 2013 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language film. Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo, in a magnificent performance) is celebrating his 65th birthday, surrounded by a diverse assortment of his friends and colleagues. The party is non-stop, a frenzied mixture of sensuality and alcohol-infused gaiety. It seems to go on forever, a wild testament to the life Jep leads. It's been 40 years since he published his successful novel -- his only novel -- but he is, in his own words, "the king of the high life" and, until now, he's accepted that role. But a dizzying array of people and events lays siege to him after his landmark birthday. His encounters with death, long-lost friends, a new love, and art itself (both grotesque and resplendent) find him looking at his world with more questions than answers. It's an exhilarating journey that can't help but bring profound change or acceptance.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) is beautiful, original, eccentric, monstrous at times, and always unexpected. It carries a willing audience into the gloriousness of Rome -- and into the hearts of a bizarre gathering of pretenders, misfits, snobs, and voyeurs. Sometimes mocking, sometimes surprising us with its compassion, the film defies convention. Each frame is a thing of beauty; Rome fills the screen with its living art -- its architecture, its religious core, its outcasts, and, first and foremost, its art. As we travel with him, Jep becomes a thing of beauty as well -- flawed, self-absorbed, and yet radiant, insightful, and humane.

Not a movie for everyone, certainly not for young kids, the irony here is that while Jep never found "The Great Beauty" he was looking for, Paolo Sorrentino has found his with a camera.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the many events in The Great Beauty (parties, weddings, funerals, etc.) How do the filmmakers use these events to deepen our understanding of the characters?

  • This movie is a prime example of filmmaking as an "art form." What makes a movie "artistic"? What other films have you seen that you believe are works of art? Why?

  • What is "The Great Beauty" of this film's title? From what do you think Jep was reading at the movie's end?

Movie Details

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