Bravos and boos divided the press audience at the pre-premiere screening of Paolo Sorrentino's film Youth at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.
Journalists hailed and catcalled Sorrentino's English-language film starring Harvey Keitel and Michael Caine as two elderly residents of an Alpine spa hotel trying to fend off the inevitable and revive memories of their youthful antics.
Divisive debate pervaded Twitter, with users calling the film "conceited, inane, egocentric" and a "masterpiece".
"Youth is an optimistic film, possibly made to exorcise certain fears that I and I think all of us have," Sorrentino said at a press conference.
"If you can have glimpse into the future, you can have a reason of youth", said the director, who won the best foreign film Oscar with The Great Beauty last year.
Actors Caine, Keitel, Paul Dano, Jane Fonda, Rachel Weisz and producers Fabio Conversi, Nicola Giuliano and Giampaolo Letta were also at the press conference.
Youth, which premieres Wednesday night, is one of three Italian films competing for the Palme d'Or.
The others are Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales, also in English, and Nanni Moretti's 'Mia Madre' (My Mother).
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