Stealing Beauty (1996)

Why so much hype?

So much average

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Is this movie about a young girl's search for the truth about her parents? Is it about her yearning to become a woman? Or is it just about sex? I'll leave it to you to decide.Liv Tyler is alluring as the young American who returns to Italy to delve into her mother's mysterious past. Jeremy Irons has little to do as her ailing British confidant, and extra support comes from Joseph Fiennes, Sinead Cusack, Rachel Weisz, Stefania Sandrelli, Jean Marais, D.W. Moffett and Donald McCann.Bertolucci's film, from his own original story, gets its strength from the visual. Art direction is inspired and cinematography is picturesque. Little else uplifts.Wednesday, April 26, 2000 - Video

Lucy (played by Liv Tyler) is a 19 American girl which travels to Italy after her mother die. She's coming back to a farmhouse where her mother lived once. It's not the first time she's going there, she had been there four years earlier, so she knows almost everyone in the house. She's young, she's beautiful, she's very attractive, but she's also very innocent and… virgin. Every man in the house, from the older to younger, feel her presence and enjoy it, on one or another way, because she's everything but invisible. Her presence is really noticed, but she's not provocative at all. In fact she's very calm and shy. The entire plot is about her, her feelings, people which surround her, and the way she's growing as a woman. It's all that together what makes this movie so beautiful and intimate, because it's a portrait of the fears and hopes, disillusions and happiness, joy and anger of a teenage girl which is having some "feelings" for the very first time.I enjoyed the story but also the settings used, because it's all so peaceful and calm, it's all so quiet in that lost place somewhere in Italy… The cinematography is beautiful and has this "special touch" European cinema use to have, with those little details which turn the movie so truthful and realistic. I like it a lot! About the acting I must say I enjoyed especially two characters and the respective actors who played them. They were the character "Lucy", played by Liv Taylor and "Alex", played by Jeremy Irons. It's especially those two characters which make this story so beautiful to me.To sum up, it's a simple but wonderful movie and another excellent work by Bernardo Bertolucci.

To comprehend this empty, meaningless drivel, one must accept, as do the characters in it, the premise that Liv Tyler is a veritable goddess of love. Unfortunately, as she is stultifyingly dull, inane, superficial, selfish, coy, and vapid, this is impossible. God only knows why Bertolucci cast her in this role, surrounded by others who can actually act. Not even consummate pro Jeremy Irons can make his fascination with this simpering whiner sound sincere.The story is as banal as she is: teenage Lucy (Tyler) returns to Italy to lose her virginity, dreaming of a sexy young Italian she met at 13. She does not delight in the Tuscan landscape, study art, or learn Italian, which she insists on pronouncing with an excruciating American accent. Lucy lodges with a fatuous English sculpture and family who live the kind of 'bohemian' life only available to the idle rich. The boys are beautiful (young Joseph Fiennes is stunning) and, their hormones raging, are after just one thing.The only thoughtful character is a middle-aged man dying of AIDS (Irons). His inexplicable presence and predicament may have been the director's idea of adding 'weight' to this fluff. He and Lucy become friends, though one cannot grasp why. Perhaps she admires his ability speak in sentences that parse. Her utter self-absorption is forgotten for a moment as he is whisked away to die in a hospital. But as soon as the ambulance is out of sight, pretty, perky, pouty Lucy quickly comes to her senses and returns to the task at hand: giving it up.The only other American in the film is a thoroughly odious entertainment lawyer who, when not on the phone making deals, cheats on his wife at every turn. Being within earshot, she always catches him. He follows her around and grovels.But back to Lucy! She is a relentless tease and remorselessly leads on her paramour. When the time comes, however, she spurns him with one last shrill whine of consternation, and flounces out of the room leaving him decidedly 'blue'.Bertolucci must have been in love to have been this blind.

Having seen some of Bernaldo Bertolucci's films, STEALING BEAUTY appears to me as rather a different work. Its content does not seem to offer much to a viewer who expects something ambitious. While seeing the movie, I must admit that I felt disappointed, sometimes even angry with the whole thing; yet, I don't deny that I liked some aspects of it. What surely remained in my memory after I gave a view to STEALING BEAUTY?First, it is definitely Liv Tyler. She is beautiful and sensual in the lead. Her character of Lucy is seemingly innocent, she is called "a virgin" since she waits and waits patiently to find the love of her life. When we see her through the first half of the movie, we discover her, get to know her similarly as we get to know someone in real life. It's like a sort of "striptease of emotions." Lucy's straightforwardness is conveyed in her love to her late mother, Sarah, who had once been to Tuscany before Lucy was born... However, her innocence is not that endless... The lusts and desires take over soon... But concerning Liv Tyler alone in this picture, she is really good and fits to the role. Unforgettable!Second, it is the dreamlike locations that you will not forget. Bertolucci, after his far away exotic movie journeys to China, Sahara Desert and Tibet, comes back to his homeland, to Italy and, more precisely to the beautiful Tuscany where, as many poets wrote, the sun shines more pleasantly, the hills bear a magical power and the people best understand the word "Amore" (Love). Yes, the movie can boast some romantic moments in the marvelous region with its olive trees, picturesque hills and almost heavenly colors.Third, it is for Jeremy Irons that you will not forget the film. He does a great job in the interesting and moving role of seriously ill Alex whom Lucy supplied with the "incredible frivolity of the dying." Irons does his best to express the desire to live, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a change of heart forced by his cruel destiny. Alex is one of these people whom Lucy really trusts.But that is all that talks for the movie's value. If it weren't for the three above aspects, STEALING BEAUTY would be just a sheer waste of time, a film that has nothing to offer, that carries no good message. Its content is not ambitious at all; there are chaotic moments; the action is deadly predictable; there are weak performances, including Carlo Cecchi or Sinead Cusack. I also disliked the many vulgar scenes in which everything appears to be focused on lust and no feeling. As a matter of fact, the entire movie is about sexual desire, which occurs to be provocative, tempting, vulgar, sometimes even deviated. Lucy observes the people she meets, is fascinated by their making love to one another (consider the moment she finds Niccolo with a girl in the park). The final moment is one of the most erotically detailed scenes of cinema and excuses itself by the fact that it is meant to show the first love. A 19-year old virgin who at last takes a man! It is true that it is the first time for both, Lucy and her "vacation lover" but it cannot be called beauty or art. The moments the youngsters smoke marijuana are also vulgar and obscure. Moreover, music is nothing special in this movie, which disappointed me keeping in mind that it could have been so great. Actually, the film is about love affairs in Tuscany...Putting it in a nutshell, STEALING BEAUTY is not a film for everyone. People who know Bertolucci will be shocked by his "difference" here. Ambitious viewers will find it "so so" just average. People who want a movie to carry a message will leave the seat in disappointment. Yet, I don't discourage you to see it. There is some art around these lustful desires, the art of Liv Tyler's girlish beauty, the art of picturesque land of artists and the art of great acting by Jeremy Irons. 4/10