I typically don’t like my movies weird. Or metaphorical. Or overly talky. I like to think that my tastes align with general audiences more often than not, my preference for entertaining fare over artistic critic bait well known. And yet every year, there’s one or two artistic critic bait movies that catch me off guard, and 2015’s selection is Youth, an odd but oddly alluring drama starring Michael Caine, Rachel Weisz, Harvey Keitel, Paul Dano and Jane Fonda.

Youth is also not the kind of movie I’ll recommend to anyone.

Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, who made the artistic critic bait film The Great Beauty a couple years ago—a critically acclaimed movie I turned off after 10 minutes for being too artistic and weird for my taste—Youth just grabbed my attention from the first minute and rarely let go. It’s strange and Sorrentino definitely likes to go off the deep end at times, but it’s strange in a largely grounded way. That probably doesn’t make any sense—just trust me.

The cast is great, but Rachel Weisz stands out as the best of the bunch, delivering an emotionally powerful performance despite her character receiving a relatively small amount of screen time.

Youth isn’t for everyone—in fact, it isn’t for most people—but if you let yourself be absorbed by the film, you may just find yourself as enthralled as I was.

Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.