Dominic Matei is a linguistic professor who dedicated his life to study the origins of human languages but ends up with the decision of committing suicide after years of fruitless searches. Fortunately, on the journey to kill himself, Matei is struck by a lightning bolt and is regenerated to a much younger man. With the fresh new body, Matei decides to live a whole new life that he would never regret.
The suspicion that all this froth builds up towards nothing but some poetic imagery is inexorably realized and sours the magic of the second half of the film.
Nem mesmo a bela fotografia e a impecável direção de arte conseguem salvar esta bagunça narrativa que, sob a desculpa de promover uma discussão metafísica, faz Coppola parecer um cineasta em início de carreira.
Philadelphia Inquirer
February 07, 2008
Youth Without Youth is so beautiful, in fact, that it almost transcends the epic bunkum of Coppola's script. But almost doesn't count, even when it is uttered in ancient tongues.
Although it's easy to admire what [Coppola] was attempting to do with Youth Without Youth, the movie fails on such a thorough and complete level that to call it a noble attempt isn't really fair: It's really a colossal miscalculation.
Detroit News
January 11, 2008
A terrible mess of mystical mumbo jumbo, but you have to give Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth this: It is one magnificent and interesting failure of a film.
Very much a film of this era, its director returning after a ten-year absence from the cinema with a peculiar little masterpiece about things unrecoverable in time.
Youth Without Youth smacks of vanity project from the first poetic moments to the last, and whose vanity lays a stronger claim to the big screen than Francis Ford Coppola's?