Stay As You Are (1978)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Sorry, this movie sucks

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Nicely executed soap opera of middle-aged architect Marcello Mastroianni loving the criminally gorgeous seventeen-year-old Nastassja Kinski before ultimately breaking up. Of course, nothing in life is simple. Years ago, Mastroianni had an affair with Kinski's mother and the possibility exists that she is his real daughter. Oh, to hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss! But Incest be damned. Instead, he spends one night making savage love to her before they both realize this May-December business renders it all pointless.The direction is functional. Alberto Lattuada has one artistic shot of two bright orange rowing shells emerging from under a dull stone bridge and forming striking geometric patterns, but then he goes and ruins it with clichés. Mastroianni is wandering with a camera around one of Florence's tourist spots. The movie camera pans around until it fixes on some feature of the landscape -- some swans, a statue in a ruined state -- then we hear a camera shutter click and the picture freezes. This happens half a dozen repetitive times for reasons known only to the director, or maybe nobody at all. At a horse race, the animals pound along in slow motion. Ho hum. The musical score is mostly electronic, or tinny violins, and is more irritating than constructive.The best part of the film comes from the two principals. Of Kinski it must be said that her features and figure are almost too flawless. There isn't a single angle that doesn't flatter her and make her look desirable in the most sensual way. The curious thing is that -- well, there is a photo of her in the arms of her compellingly ugly father, Klaus, in which she can't be more than a few years old. She stares at the camera with a dark gaze that's already arresting. Now she's middle aged and STILL looks like the perfectly featured middle-aged woman! Dancing around the flat in the nude, she makes Mastroianni bite her plump rear cheek. Okay. One or two nude scenes resembling soft-core porn. But she is, after all, just a wanton kid at heart. She plays disgusting tricks on Mastroianni and nags him to take her to night clubs when all the poor guy wants to do is sleep.Mastroianni is fiftyish and his age shows. He's no longer the lost young journalist of "La Dolce Vita" but he's still handsome. I can forgive him his handsomeness because he's so superior at projecting emotions that we ordinary men can identify with -- doubt, pathos, guilt. The merest of Mastroianni's resigned shrugs gets the job done. Cary Grant was handsome too, but he won me over with his ability to show bemusement and mock indignation.Unfortunately, the film is dubbed, and not well. Mastroianni is given the mellifluous baritone of a radio actor or the guy who does voiceovers in TV commercials. Kinski has the breathless piping voice of an adolescent and it sounds like whoever did her dubbing had a difficult time with it because the effort shows. Better if Kinski had dubbed herself. Hers has a distinctive deep nasal quality that we've all learned to associate with her appearance on screen.

"Stay As You Are" deals with a man who is attracted to a young girl, who finds out that she is the daughter of a prior lover (now dead), and that he might be her father (we never find out either way). When Francesca finds out she might be her daughter, it doesn't phase her. The man who has raised her, she looks in a father-daughter way. Giulio, she looks as a lover. The fact that he might be her father has no bearing on her.Likewise, although Giulio has sex with Francesca, knowing that she might be his daughter, around the the girl he has raised, he respects the incest taboo. In no way is he sexually interested in his own daughter. Francesca just walks into his life, then he learns that he might be her father."Time" magazine said all love stories have something keeping the lovers apart. Parents, class, money, etc. In this case, I don't think it was the incest taboo. Just that Francesca cannot see herself living with Giulio. I think he she had seen them as living together forever, she would have worked on it, taboo or no taboo.

I watched that movie in Italian and I hardly could ask for the wayin that language. So I more or less had to guess the plot albeit itwas not too much of an effort given the complexity of it ;)17 years old female (Nastassja Kinski) falls in love with a 50 yearsold who could be her father. Eventually he turns out to indeed be herfather. To me the all time most graceful and beautiful (insert all otherthinkable positive attributes appropriate for describing a goddesshere) picture of a female appearance was in that scene when he waswatering some plants in his house and then she came in smilingly sayingCiao.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film because I had seen the low scores it had received from imdb. In fact, this was one of the more impressive love story films I have seen in a long time. The plot is essentially about a middle-aged man who gets tangled up with a 20-year old girl and finds that both of them have a hard time resisting the other. Soon after meeting, however, he discovers that he may actually be the girl's father! He struggles endlessly with this dilemma, but the temptation of romance and sex with a vibrant young woman is irresistable.It's a story that takes an interesting look at one of the most prevalent taboos in virtually all modern societies: incest. But it does so intelligently and unpredictably. The man is a protagonist: he struggles and suffers over the morality of his actions, but he is also human and in need of passion in his life (which he no longer gets from his wife). The girl might seem to be the victim, but she is not, at least not on the surface. She is excited by mature, wise men, and it's of little importance that he is old enough to be her father.As the romance intensifies, it's ridiculousness is magnified, but again it is done in very intelligent and subtle (and therefore realistic) ways. The mature and steady protagonist suddenly appears to be somewhat foolish. What will they ever talk about? What do they really have in common once they get out of their hotel bed? Yet he is too weak and desparate and lonely to do anything else. The immature girl is the one who begins to realize that the relationship has already peaked.In the end, the film is an excellently told tale about the mid-life crisis so many middle-aged men face. The incest part of the story, which may disgust the more puritanical types, is only an additional wrinkle to a very interesting and complex (but not uncommon) situation.A young Nastassja Kinski is convincing as the flighty but romantic 20-year old, and Marcello Mastroianni turns in another one of his great performances, solidifying my belief that he is one of the four or five greatest actors of all time.