The novella YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH is a love story laced with Jungian transcendentalism, mind/body dualism, time and origins, and destiny. Thanks to potent direction and acting by Frances Coppola and Tim Roth, respectively, it survives adaption for the screen ... barely. The action begins in 1938 Romania, where a 70-year old professor of language and philosophy, Dominic Matei (Roth) is contemplating suicide. The love of his youth is dead, and he knows he has neither the will nor time to complete his life's work on the origins of language. Ka-pow! – lightning strikes. Literally. Miraculously, Matei survives … then begins to grow younger … and then develops special abilities like being able to learn Chinese in days, read dreams, and perform telekinesis. But now he has to outrun Nazis who want to study him, so he flees the country and changes his identity. Decades pass. Now it's the ‘50s in America, and Matei meets a young woman whom he mentors through her own passage in time following a lightning storm. Not only does he rediscover love, he finds the key to his research through his lover's new abilities. Matei's dilemma: Should he surrender to the earthly pleasures of love and ethos, or use this second life to complete his magnum opus on the origins of human language? Romanian actress Alexandra Maria Lara plays both his lost love and his new one (who alternates between reincarnation and regression). Roth, playing dual roles as himself and himself, is superb. I strongly suggest you invest two hours to wade through this beautiful mess.
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