Gefühl und Verführung

I have to say this, so forgive: if you are a woman, you will understand this movie. If only my own adolescence and graduation into womanhood could have been so rich and beautiful. This film is one of my favorites! It is masterfully filmed, it couldn't help but be with Bertolucci at the helm. Liv Tyler is gorgeous and full of youthful innocence, romance and curiosity. For me, the whole experience of naively stumbling into one's sexuality is accurately portrayed. If you go in expecting that you will see a "Hollywood" ending--one that neatly ties up all the loose ends of the character's life--then you will be disappointed. This film is about a "chapter" in the journey of one young woman's life. And it's a fine chapter.

While this is not my favorite Bertolucci film, Stealing Beauty left me inspired and contented. Bertolucci's brush strokes are wide, yet meticulously placed, leading us down a sensual and beautiful path of discovery. He packs a lot of plot into a week of story and two hours of film, but it is believable because many extraordinary things can happen in a short time frame when one travels abroad. Liv Tyler did well, reminding me of my teenage years, yearning yet still undecided. This movie has one of the best (sexy!) loss of virginity scenes in recent memory.

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 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.

I think I saw this film at a film festival when it was newly released (or prior to release) and seem to recall a scene that was missing when I watched it again recently.

Remember when they all go over to that grand villa for the evenings party and the artist guy stays home to carve away at his tree stump with the chainsaw. I remember him sanding more and creating this lovely (and suggestive!) hole in it that later when his wife returns home and finds him caressing the hole suggestively and the two of them then make love. This time when I watch the film it just cuts to the place where she leans against the wall and hikes up her dress above the knee (what the hell is that all about?). The original was one of my favorite parts because of how that scene was enhanced with the music soundtrack... but now it's gone! So my question is: Am I right or dreaming? Anybody else remember this?