Sunday 23 February 2014

THE GREAT BEAUTY HITS THE BIG TIME IN EVERY WAY. The sacred and the profane together in harmony.

I left the house tonight leaving my friend Jack, watching his computer with goggles on, his feet on my bed with his shoes still on, in my spare bedroom . I had to leave, I needed change badly I wanted to search for something to feed my soul, not Yoga. I needed nourishment, that would feel like visiting a church in Venice. I found it. As I entered the cinema in Santa Monica, three women were trying to share two tickets, I thought this was charming. They were desperate to see this Italian film. They agreed they would take it in turns. At the end of the film, the man next door to me asked me what it meant, and did I understand it? I said he was too used to Top Gun, and that films like this, had all the answers he needed for life.

 The Great Beauty directed by Paulo Sorrentino, with music by Lele Marchitelli, the score has some magnificent classical pieces too. It is in my books,(although already nominated for an Oscar, winner of a Globe and at Cannes|||) far the best film this year. It leaves the other nominations like damp rags cleaning up the floor. With lashings of wit, debauchery, it is a story about a journalist who wants to be the king of parties. Out of the midst of disco music, gyrating dancers, a man smoking, clears the screen.   If you wish to know the meaning of life, this could help you. He wanted to have the power to make a party, or make it fail. With so many ideas, images bouncing in every direction mingling the avaricious with the pious, the film has the power to make everybody think.  A man living life to the full, but never full enough with anything meaningful, one lascivious moment after another.  Yet the images turn the superficiality to depth. Lessons from Plastic surgery. With wonderful lines like "You are guaranteed to be unhappy if you know too many people"  I am left remembering a young girl beckoning him, another one stripping, a nun climbing steps on her knees, hide and seek in a garden, a happy couple, disco music, art, Princesses gambling, sitting on a boat. This film deserved the cheering and the never ending claps.

The Italian Los Angeles Film Festival, LA opens with the film tomorrow.
I won last Summer with my film, a documentary drama, The gun the cake and the butterfly at Pascal Vicedomini's Ischian Film and Music Festival, Best art film, The Lina Wertmuller prize for her late husband.  I  showed a completely different edit of the film there.  It has now changed so dramatically that it is completely new in so many ways.  I just followed my life, which is totally and utterly different in a very fast twelve months. The people I loved then, are no longer, and like the man in the film I am looking to the meaning of life, and enjoy its beauty. I hope you do too, when you get the chance to see this magnificent movie.

In Los Angeles, Hollywood the film world is racing up to the Oscars, I am still on my diet, though not such a saint. I was caught eating two biscuits by my housekeeper here, who took everything in her own hands and snitched them back to her house.  I was photographed for Genlux Magazine yesterday, where I am fashion editor.  It was lots of fun, with Maxfield's helping out with my clothes, Lisa C styling it, Angela Kalinowski doing my hair, Tracey Morris photographing me for the cover to celebrate Britweek, and Gregory's too.  A wonderful Jaguar turned up, that I could have driven forever. There is lots of generosity here in Hollywood. Also, a few nerves with be touched by the above film, which also could apply to any city in the world. The old men chasing something that never existed, and happiness is something pretty ordinary. A lesson to us all.
Perhaps there will be Famingos on my terrace tomorrow too?

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