From Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino - director of The Great Beauty (a Watershed audience favourite from back in 2013) - comes this delicious, bittersweet drama set amongst the world of film and music featuring a tour de force performance by Michael Caine.

In a health spa, set against the perfect summery backdrop of the Swiss Alps, we find several disparate characters who have travelled there for very different reasons. At its centre are two old friends - Fred (Michael Caine), a curmudgeonly retired composer, and Mick (Harvey Keitel), an elderly film director - whose life experiences are fodder for humorous and wise reflections on both the past and the present. Fellini’s influence, especially that of 8½, is never far away and throw in a supporting cast of Jane Fonda (as Mick’s Muse), Paloma Faith (as herself!), Rachel Weisz (as Fred’s jilted daughter) and Paul Dano (as a Hollywood star) and you’ve got a wonderfully colourful collection of portraits featuring eccentrics and overeducated characters who find themselves in a hell of an ethical mess.

Wistful, humorous and graceful - and as visually stylish as you’d expect from Sorrentino - this is a lovely and heart-warming reflection on time and aging which offers further evidence, if any were needed, of Sorrentino’s position as one of contemporary cinema’s finest filmmakers. Enjoy.

• The screenings of Youth on Tue 2 Feb are part of our Cinébites deal: Get 30% off any main dish in the Café/Bar with a valid cinema ticket.

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