Stealing Beauty (1996)

I loved Bernardo Bertolucci's movie "Stealing Beauty" (1996) when I saw it for the first time almost 15 years ago, and I remember how surprised I was to rather mixed and lukewarm reactions of some famous and respectable critics towards it. Many of them accused Stealing Beauty in what they called "apparent self-indulgence, and lack of character development and drama." I don't care about self-indulgence if it helps to create as beautiful and pleasing to all senses film as Stealing Beauty. And if the critics did not feel sweet gentle sadness from encountering the stealing beauty that one can't hold on to forever, I feel sorry for them.I re-watched the film recently and I loved it even more than first time. It has got some healing quality to it, it glows under Tuscany sun. It is filled with warmth, longing and bitter-sweetness.This must be one of my favorite movies about coming of age, about unforgettable moment in time that changes life of a young person forever and touches lives of all people around her. In the center of the film, there is Lucy, a 19 years old American girl, who came to Italy to spend the summer with the group of artists - friends of her mother while trying to come to terms with her mother's recent suicide and the secrets that she took with her. Lucy will learn more about people she thought she knew well and about herself. She will change forever during the unforgettable summer in Tuscany.Stealing Beauty is a European film in the best sense of the word. Leisurely paced, gorgeously shot, it looks in the faces of characters, in the beauty surrounding them, with interest and affection. This is a lovely film that celebrates life and beauty of youth, nature and Italy, Art and power of memory. This film reminds me another favorite of mine, "Enchanting April" (1992). Perhaps, because both movies have the same atmosphere, the similar scenery, the sun of Tuscany, and their effect on characters, and both are so delightfully and unabashedly romantic.Liv Tyler in her first big role lit the screen with her beauty and, charming awkwardness. She was very convincing as the girl hesitating to step over the border between adolescence and maturity. Lyv Tyler obviously was not an experienced actress at 19 but I don't think it was required of her. Lucy was natural and charming, innocent and curious, she was the center of the film, and her innocence, wholesomeness, insecurity and seriousness touched lives of everyone she spent that summer in Tuscany with. Watching Tyler simply move on screen is a cinematic pleasure. One second, the movements of her endless legs and arms are graceful and fluid, next - she is all angular impetuosity. She knew the effect of her luminous beauty on everyone but she was not quite sure how to deal with it.Besides Liv Tyler in the performance that made her a star, Jeremy Irons is also memorable as Alex Parrish. "Stealing Beauty" was the last feature film of the multi- talented, famous and beloved French actor, Jean Marais, mostly known for his collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Lucino Visconti and for many excellent film and stage performances.

Do we leer when we watch films by Bertolucci and Woody Allen? Do you leer? For all their supposed investigation of the celebration of nubile women by middle aged and old men, neither filmmaker quite convinces me that he has quite the interest in these young women that all the artifice, music, flowers, lovely scenery, and other settings suggest. I know that actresses report liking to work with Mr. Allen, as do actors. I am aware that we no longer make that gender distinction but humour me for a moment. Bertolucci has a reputation for pushing actors to full disclosure, as it were. No one discloses anything here.I just saw "Stealing Beauty" for the first time this week during the summer 2012. I find it implausible that a large household of odd mostly male characters would devote a summer contemplating the virginity of a girl. Leering defines, I suppose, a theme for a film as much as any other topic. The loss of virginity seems to me the theme of adolescent films but a bit too much and too little for a film filled with randy old men but these old men seem long past being randy while the young men mostly seem nascent old me without substance.Roger Ebert as usual pins this film in his review. Read it. The men, young and old, lack substance and the nubile girl never becomes a person. Woody Allen usually suggests that the object of desire is a human being and an engaging one at that. Bertolucci does not bother. I rate his film highly because here Bertolucci perfects his leering.

Watching this is like taking a leisurely vacation in the rolling hills of Tuscany. I don't think there's any place in America that has such a sky. The sun seems a misty ochre and the land, where it's not tilled in straight furrows, consists of gravel paths between low stone walls, olive groves, chest-high grape arbors, and dark sturdy oaks. The arbors are populated by hordes of skittery lizards, Lacerta muralis. It's no wonder that summer dinners so often are eaten on long tables al fresco. What an appealing location.And that, maybe, is the principal virtue of Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty." It takes patience and concentration to follow the story closely enough to be engaged by it, and, at heart, there really isn't much to it. A visiting American, the pretty and leggy Liv Tyler, finds out that a local artist is probably her real father, and shortly afterward gives up her virginity to an equally inexperienced local boy.There's a lot of casual conversation, some of which seems to have little point. The function of some characters is a bit obscure. Jeremy Irons, a splendid actor, plays an older man who offers to serve as Liv Tyler's father. He's ill and is finally driven away in an ambulance. An almost unrecognizable Jean Marais is a dotty French visitor. Where do the French get these actors? They're sympatico without being particularly handsome. Jean Gabin, Philippe Noiret. I think I'll exclude Yves Montand because a girl friend once told me he was handsome, and I'm not talking about physical beauty.With Bernardo Bertolucci you generally get some fairly explicit sex, as you do here. There is a party one night. After the guests are exhausted by all that dancing, they retire to engage in sexual activities of various stripes. (Poor Rachel Weisz.) But it's far from soft-core porn. Bertolucci avoids the billowing curtains and candle light clichés. There are no fingertips caressing unidentifiable furrows of someone else's body. When the sweet but innocent Italian boy is about to deflower Liv Tyler, he asks, "Can you help me?", and she slides her hand down inside his jeans. It's not exactly a torrid scene, though, and it doesn't end dramatically. The next morning, strolling back to the villa, the kid says that he'd like to follow her to America. She turns and replies, "Do so." And that's that. The kid runs off, waving, and we don't know whether he'll follow her or not, nor do we care anymore than Liv Tyler seems to care.It's in no way a breakthrough film. Bertolucci takes his time and forces us to relax too. There's no violence and no tragedy. I have some trouble imagining most teen-aged kids enjoying this, especially the boys, whose taste and patience have been eroded over the years by exposure to a nimiety of films in which a shoot out with ugly guns has to take place every ten minutes. (Compare the original 1974 "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" with this year's remake, for an example of how esthetic values have devolved.) Liv Tyler gets stung on the arm and the breast by bees, but, you know what? I don't care. I'd like to be among that crowd for a summer. Sure, it would be tough, brushing up on whatever Italian I remember, but I wouldn't have to relearn any of it if Liv Tyler and her legs should come visiting. She speaks surprisingly good English for an American.

Liv Tyler's (Armageddon, LOTR trilogy) mother has just committed suicide and she goes to Tuyscany to visit her mother's friends in a coming-of-age adventure. Director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emporer) strive to bring out in Tyler what is probably her best screen performance.This was Joseph Fiennes' (Shakespher in Love) first film role, and one of the first for Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener, The Mummy).With a great performance by Jeremy Irons (Elizabeth I, Reversal of Fortune), this film is a story about life and death and the search for who you are. It is character focused. Some of the best parts are gatherings where you just watch the characters interact.A good European film for those looking for quality, not action.