STEALING BEAUTY
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(Fox Searchlight)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Written by Susan Minot
Cast Liv Tyler, Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack, Donal McCann,
Rachel Weisz, D. W. Moffett, Carlo Cecchi, Stefania
Sandrelli, Roberto Zibetti
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for nudity and sexual content)
Running Time 118 minutes
Reviewed at The Colony, Raleigh, NC (29JUN96)
==
With apologies to John Landis, a better title might have been AN AMERICAN VIRGIN IN TUSCANY. This exquisitely shot soft-core romp through the Italian countryside stars Liv Tyler (EMPIRE) as a 19- year-old American whose stay at a sculptor's hillside home-- for the purposes of having her portrait made and losing her virginity, and not necessarily in that order-- causes all the men around her to act like dogs in heat. They sniff, growl at, and circle their bitches for two very long hours. Ms. Tyler, the current queen of the ingenues, projects an innocence that would be rather sweet to behold if the director, Bernardo Bertolucci (LITTLE BUDDA, LAST TANGO IN PARIS), didn't have so much sex on his mind.
When a dying playwright (Jeremy Irons) meets Lucy, he immediately begins babbling about the importance of the dirty deed. At this point, a certain absurdity creeps into the movie that never leaves, and which prevents the semi-serious story from breathing without heaving. The whole thing is over-sexed. My favorite: the strange symbolism of Liv vomiting into a man's crotch! And what about all those below-the-hemline camera angles?! (To be fair, the story isn't entirely perverted: Lucy is also trying to solve the mystery of who bopped her mom, many years ago on that same hillside.) Bathed in the relaxed amber tones of cinematographer Darius Khondji (SEVEN, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN), STEALING BEAUTY certainly has the best scenery of any summer movie. Too bad that those below- the-belt stirrings have more to do with a lack of blood flow to the buttocks than anything else.
Grade: C+
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
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