The veteran actors are joined by Jane Fonda and Rachel Weisz in the wellness center flick.
Image courtesy of AFI/Timothy NorrisImage courtesy of AFI/Timothy Norris
The new film Youth is a rarity: A major motion picture shot largely on location at a spa. Veteran English actor Michael Caine plays retired orchestra conductor and composer Fred Ballinger, who meets his longtime American friend and filmmaker Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), at an unspecified upscale wellness center somewhere in Switzerland.
“In the story, this is where Harvey and I spend time when we’re free. We’ve been coming here for years,” Caine explained during a personal appearance following an AFI Fest screening of Youth at the 1920s Egyptian Theatre beside Hollywood Boulevard’s fabled Walk of Fame. AFI Fest is an annual film festival presented by the nonprofit American Film Institute, founded in 1967.
In the movie, Fred and Mick discuss the meaning of life in between Mick’s story conferences with writers who have accompanied him to Switzerland to work on his next screenplay. At the posh spa, they enjoy massages, wraps, facials, sauna and steam sessions, and hang out with Brenda Morel (played by Jane Fonda), a ditzy diva—and Mick’s muse—who has flown in to discuss her role in his upcoming picture. They also see Fred’s daughter, Lena Ballinger (Rachel Weisz), who joins her father for treatments while undergoing her own personal crisis.
Paul Dano plays Hollywood actor Jimmy Tree, and British pop star Paloma Faith and Grammy Award-winning South Korean lyric coloratura soprano Sumi Jo play versions of themselves. Romanian model/actress Madalina Ghenea portrays a Brazilian Miss Universe, notably in one of the film’s most memorable, eye-catching scenes, in which Fred and Mick bathe in a large indoor Jacuzzi together.
During his Egyptian Theatre talk, Caine revealed details of how the iconic scene was shot by Youth’s director, Paolo Sorrentino, who favors spontaneity over rehearsal.
“Paolo said, ‘Get into the pool. There’s no dialogue—just enjoy the warmth.’ Madalina came in with no clothes on—she’s stunning with clothes on. Our reactions are real—we didn’t know [Ghenea would enter nude],” related 82-year-old Caine, who, along with 76-year-old Keitel, appear slack-jawed and awestruck during the improvised vignette. (Swiss spas, such as Grand Resort Bad Ragaz and Kulm Hotel St. Moritz, routinely provide “textile-free” zones.)
At the press conference, Caine also pointed out that rather than in a Hollywood studio, Youth was filmed on location at an actual Alpine oasis of health, which was closed to the public during the six-week shoot. Although not identified by name in the movie, the spa is said to be the five-star Waldhaus Flims Mountain Resort & Spa, located south of Zürich, west of Chur, in eastern Switzerland.
The spa hotel opened in 1877 and has evolved from its origins as a Belle Époque banquet hall to Switzerland’s largest “hotel park.” The complex includes five restaurants, several bars and an elegant 8,202-square foot well-being facility.
Youth also makes good use of the spa’s sublime Swiss surroundings, where Flims, 3,609 feet above sea level, is located above the Rhine Gorge, near Lake Cauma. In one whimsical scene Caine’s maestro, Ballinger, encounters a herd of cows in an exquisite Alpine meadow. From the safety of a tree stump, he “conducts” a symphony of musical moos and clanging cowbells, call it “Swiss heavy metal music.”
At the Egyptian Theatre, Caine revealed that he likes to play characters who “test” him. However, “Conducting is not as easy as it looks!” he confessed, while also praising David Lang, Youth’s composer of original music.
Although Youth is arguably the best film to use a spa setting since Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece 8½, this isn’t the first time Flims has been rendered in art: In 1904 Giovanni Giacometti (father of renowned Swiss sculptor Alberto) was commissioned to paint Flims Panorama. The Post-Impressionistic triptych was rediscovered and restored in 1986 and now adorns the resort’s lobby.
Naples-born writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 The Great Beauty nabbed the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but Youth isn’t eligible for an Academy Award in that category because it’s in English. However, fans shouldn’t be surprised if this philosophical, mystical movie meditation on memory, meaning, aging, passion, love, life—and spas!—is Oscar-nominated in other categories.
Youth premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and in select U.S. theaters this past weekend. More information can be found here.
Los Angeles-based reviewer Ed Rampell writes about spas and cinema, and co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.
