Gefühl und Verführung

When this filmed first came on the scene, there was a lot of critics that downed the intensity of this film... of course their favorite words were pseudoartistic crap. America is not ready for this film. Look at what we embrace in our films: blood, sex, nudity, shock value. America is not ready for a film that sees the attraction towards a 19 year-old as a natural thing. American normalcy sees this as wrong, deceitful, and impure. Bertolucci did not make a film, he reflected humanity through a camera. This film dives into our own psyche seeking the desires to be pure and innocent. Only America would see this as a piece of psycho sexual fantasy into our own pedophiliac desires. Watch it people, there's a substance that you're not used to seeing in everyday flicks.

This is my favorite film. I first saw it in 1996 at the age of 16, and have been relentlessly teased ever since for enjoying it as much as I do. True film buffs, I am told, walked out on this one. I insist though that I don't have bad taste; the film simply struck a chord in me early on, and yes, it was probably because its was such a pretty film. Beauty can be quite a hook. Since then I have watched Stealing Beauty no less than a hundred times, studied Bertolucci's other films, and - of course - listened to the soundtrack, and the Mozart Concerti, so much that I have been known to hum them in my sleep. Now, I know why I love it so much. Every time I watch Stealing Beauty, there is more to discover. The premise - looking for her father/true love - and the apparent conclusion seem no more than a frame work for a hundred different leitmotifs that Bertolucci seems strangely familiar with, fascinated by, and adept at expressing in all of his films.

Bertolucci films are always magnificent to look at. From the epic scenes of The Last Emperor to the claustrophobic bedroom in Last Tango, he is a film-maker whose mastery of visual language is immense. Stealing Beauty is no exception. Right from the start, the film has a dream-like beauty which reflects its 19-year-old protagonist, Lucy (played by the stunning Liv Tyler). Lucy is beautiful, naive, dreamy and still a virgin. Her mother's suicide prompts her to go to Italy to visit her parents' bohemian friends...

There is nothing really wrong with this film but there isn't much to it either. The story is extremely slight, and even some good performances (particularly from Charles Dance as the dying man) can't save it from being slightly dull. It hints at some interesting themes - the way the post-AIDS generation is more hesitant about sex, how the past haunts the present - but does little with them. Instead, Bertolucci seems content to focus the camera on Tyler for most of the film, trying to intoxicate us with her breathtaking beauty to make us forget that there's nothing much here. This works for a while, aided greatly by the short summer dresses and some lovely scenery, but basically it can't carry the film through its entire length. Somewhere along the way I just got bored.

If this happens to be on, you could do a lot worse, but it's definitely not worth a trip to the cinema to see - not even to the video shop, I don't think. Considering Bertolucci's pedigree, I had expected better from Stealing Beauty, but I suppose everyone has their off days. Average.

A question especially uneasy to answer in this case. The plot, of course, is very simple and even trivial: young girl loses her virginity and discovers her father's identity, gaining love and surrendering death (the never understood death of her mother), while her older admirer (Jeremy Irons) who only felt in love once - with her mother - gains love again but death at the same time. This pretty kitschy plot, together with the lack of movement in great part of the film, could make it unbearable. But it results much more ambivalent... First note that you wouldn't think at all you're dealing with a movie from 1996. Actually, when I saw it I had no idea from when it was and I estimated it to be from the late 1970's or early 80's. That has to do, above all, with the ethereal landscape-cinematography, this really magnific beauty of every movement the camera (and Liv Tyler!) make, but with the music, too. When there appears Mozart's clarinette concert, for the first time, while you see the field and the house sleeping "siesta", it can make you cry because of pure beauty you conceive... And there are many moments in this film, where music (timeless and time-switching) and picture make you feel so unsure about the era this film is telling about. "Beauty hurts the heart" says Jean Marais' character once. And actually, it does. The eroticism of this movie, for my taste, was sometimes almost painfully sad and joyful at once. Difficult to describe. Between, there are many occasions where you can find the vulgarity of the story just repelling, but then comes such a vigorous sequence again... It reminds me of some of the last Rohmer movies, in some respect, although it is much warmer and not that boring. (Rohmer's coolness, nevertheless, prevails him for falling in kitsch, something that Bertolucci doesn't avoid.) The movie, in some precious moments, does exactly do what its title promises: it steals pieces of beauty from this incredible world - but it has few awareness of it. Its explicitly "deep" parts are too immature and presumptious, but its superficiality contents a profoundness that convinced me. As a piece of art, I have to consider this movie too superficial, as a piece of " just feeling" (a word that I normally hate), I cannot let to like it. 6 of 10.

This is not a "great" film, but it's elegant, well-shot, and staffed with superb actors & actresses that know their work & do it well.

You have all read the plot line, so I won't dwell on that. I will say, though, that viewers searching for a typical "story-conflict-wrapup" will be disappointed. This film is about life...several lives... and we are shown a brief window into those lives.

Lucy's story (Lucy = Liv Tyler) is, I believe, the least interesting -- we always observe her, and never get into her head, and yet know what she's about. But...she's 19... she knows very little... and Bertolucci knows that.

The real stories are how the others, older, react to her and to each other... lust, memory, envy, nostalgia for lost youth, jealousy, pride, recognition, understanding of the motion of life...

All of these evoke other stories that, unfortunately for all of you that want a nicely wrapped-up movie, you are going to have to make up in your own heads. But that's the beauty of this film.

While I hate to generalize, teens will dislike this movie, as will adults who think that suburban life is pretty good. It's never explained what any of these people actually DO, and I know that's an important problem for many movie goers.

But the rest of you... give it a try.