Stealing Beauty
(1995)
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When 19-year-old Lucy Harmon (Liv Tyler) arrives in Tuscany, wondering about her mother (a recent suicide) and still nursing a crush on Niccolo, the local playboy she met on a visit four years earlier, everyone sits up and takes notice--especially director Bernardo Bertolucci, who trains his camera on the ingenue with understandable enthusiasm. The Graysons, who own the artists' colony and villa where Lucy's mother once wrote poetry, take the young girl in, and their guests enjoy the infusion of youth. Perhaps most deeply affected is Alex Parrish (Jeremy Irons), a terminally ill writer who finds Lucy charming and vital. Before such attentions, Lucy's interest in Niccolo quickly fades, replaced by an unexpected mystery regarding the identity of her father and a possible new love. And in a further attempt to understand her mother, Lucy writes light little poems as well. (Bertolucci has her words appear on the screen as she scribbles.) In fact, everything seems light in lush and lovely Tuscany, which provides a gorgeous setting for the gifted ensemble to play out their intrigues. |
It's sad to see such an accomplished director as Bernardo Bertolucci stumble into bathos with this small-scale romantic drama. Liv Tyler stars as the American teenager who, after her mother's suicide, takes a summer holiday with an expatriate family in Tuscany. Anxious to lose her virginity and discover the identity of her biological father, she encounters a range of eccentric house guests, including Jeremy Irons as a terminally ill playwright and Jean Marais as an art dealer. It all rings pretentiously false, though the actors try hard to be convincing.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Much inconsequential talk, determined ogling of Liv Tyler and languorous perambulations in the Tuscan landscape make for a pretty, but empty, film.