Stealing BeautyStealing Beauty marked a return for Bertolucci to a more intimate scale of production, and a more familiar cultural milieu, after the logistical rigours of international shoots in exotic locales including China, North Africa and Nepal.
Nineteen-year-old Lucy (Liv Tyler) is welcomed into the idyllic Tuscan home of her late mother's bohemian friends for the summer; a convivial band of English and Irish ex-pats with a deep affection for the winsome American daughter of their recently deceased poet friend. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to her mother, Lucy is secretly intent on uncovering the identity of her biological father.
Her search takes the form of an investigation as she stealthily interrogates the villa's male inhabitants. "Where were you in August, 1975?" she asks more than once, suspecting she may have been conceived in Italy. (Her quietly insistent quest contrasts with Joe's less self-aware yet no less critical discovery of his origins in La Luna.)
In the warm, heady ripeness of summer, gorgeously filtered through cinematographer Darius Khondji's lens, more sensual instincts also assert themselves - in the young woman and in a motley assortment of would-be seducers in her thrall. "You're in need of a ravishing" Alex (Jeremy Irons) resolutely and rather poignantly tells her. An English playwright in the final throes of cancer, he is without the faintest hope of fulfilling the deed himself.
Alongside Irons, a generous-spirited ensemble also includes Sinead Cusack, Donal McCann and Rachel Weisz. Stefania Sandrelli (Giulia in The Conformist) appears in a bittersweet supporting role as a beautiful woman of mature years, all too aware of the ephemeral nature of love and desire.
New 35mm print.
