YOUTH will probably be wasted on the young. No CGI, witless banter, jejune and juvenile jesting. Just a couple of old geezers, a composer and a film maker, reminiscing and grappling with the here and now, which includes a relationship breakup between their children – the composer’s daughter and the director’s son- the weight of memory and the responsibility of the present.

With YOUTH, Paolo Sorrentino has chosen to tell the story of a man of eighty who is trying to come to terms with the realisation that his time is rapidly running out. But the film is, above all, the story of the friendship between two old men who are trying to look together towards the future, at their relationship with their children and with those who are younger than they are, and deal with life from a different perspective.

Michael Caine plays Fred, a world renowned composer and conductor, now retired, enjoying a holiday in a swish Swiss hotel with his erstwhile buddy, movie maker Mick, played by Harvey Keitel. Mick is preparing a new picture, a masterpiece that is to star Brenda Morel, the actress Mick made a star many moons ago.

Fred is being pestered by Buckingham Palace to come out of retirement to play his masterpiece at a Royal Command Performance, an offer he refuses even with the enticement of a knighthood. He has personal reasons for declining which remain a mystery until a final revelation in the last reel.

He is also dealing with Lena his daughter and personal assistant. She is in Switzerland with her father following her breakup with her husband, Julian, Mick’s son. As well as her present situation, there are undercurrents from the past concerning her relationship with her father and the interconnected relationship with her mother.

YOUTH is a very detailed, enthralling emotional story of parenthood, friendship, career and how the great sea of the past constantly laps the shores of the present.

Visually stunning, Sorrentino has chosen to set YOUTH in a hotel at the foot of the Alps, an immensely evocative location where the horizon is defined by the majestic profile of the mountains, an important narrative and visual element, both playful and poignant, emphatic and ironic.

Music has always been a very important component in Sorrentino’s films, and in YOUTH it plays a truly significant role since the lead character is a famous retired orchestra conductor and composer. Although maintaining that he does not miss music, Fred feels its presence everywhere and seeks it out almost unconsciously. Observe the surreal conducting of a herd of cows, their bovine bells orchestrated brilliantly by the maestro in a meadow of moo.

Musically, Sorrentino continues his collaboration with the American composer and 2008 Pulitzer Music Prize winner, David Lang, who composed the original score for this film and whose composition I lie complemented the opening scenes of The Great Beauty.

Sorrentino accompanies these original compositions with a rich array of other music to complete the soundtrack including The Retrosettes and the singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek and Paloma Faith, who both play themselves in the film. The South Korean soprano Sumi Jo also appears as herself.

Sublime visuals and music alone make YOUTH one of the films of the year, but it’s beautifully layered narrative, unafraid of taking off in flamboyant and exuberant flights of fancy, and the perfect performances make it the unmissable feast that it is.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keital are consummate in their portrayals, career crowning characterisations. Rachel Weisz as Lena, is as luminous as ever, and Jane Fonda channels Gloria Swanson in a devlishly delightful Diva turn as Brenda Morel. In Sunset Boulevard, Swanson as Norma Desmond says the pictures got smaller, whereas Brenda regales that cinema is dead and television is where the work is.

Notions of cinema and celebrity are brought into focus by a number of other characters staying at the hotel. Paul Dano plays an actor researching a role, and Madalina Ghenea plays Miss Universe, whose stunning physique blinds people to her prodigious psychology. Both performance and characters are super revelatory.

Added texture is given by the extraordinary array of guests and hotel staff, each of them charged with allure, mystery, and the palpable pulse of life.

One of the great films of the year, YOUTH is one for the generations.