Feeling and seduction
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Feeling and seduction |
| Original title | Stealing Beauty |
| Country of production | Great Britain , Italy , France |
| original language | English , Italian |
| Publishing year | 1996 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bernardo Bertolucci |
| script | Bernardo Bertolucci Susan Minot |
| production | Jeremy Thomas |
| music | Richard Hartley |
| camera | Darius Khondji |
| cut | Pietro Scalia |
| occupation | |
| |
Feeling and Seduction (original title: Stealing Beauty ) is a feature film by Bernardo Bertolucci from 1996.
action
The film is set in Tuscany on a country estate near the city of Siena . The young American Lucy was here years ago and now, after her mother's death, visits her friends Diana and Ian, who have lived here for decades. Ian is a sculptor ; she should be a model for him. The first time Lucy had stayed here, Lucy had fallen in love with young Niccolo. She would like to see him again now. Lucy is housed in an outbuilding and lives room to room with the seriously ill writer Alex. Alex looks forward to the last days of his life and enjoys the presence of the pretty young woman. Diana and Ian's family get together every year for Diana's birthday. Her daughter Miranda is also present. Her son Christopher joins them later from a trip with Niccolo.
Lucy learns from her late mother's diaries that her American father is not her real father. She must have been conceived here in Tuscany on a summer night in 1975, but she doesn't know who her father is. On the estate she tries to solve this secret. The first likely candidate is the war correspondent Carlo Lisca, with whom her mother had a long-term correspondence. The writer Alex could also be considered. But both explain to her that this cannot be. Eventually, it turns out that Ian is her father. He was unfaithful to his wife Diana once in just one night in 1975 and Lucy is the result of that infidelity.
Niccolo turns out to be a womanizer . At first Lucy is jealous, but then the virgin breaks her romantic fantasies and falls in love with Niccolo's brother Osvaldo. She spends her first night of love with Osvaldo and learns that it was not Niccolo who wrote her letters for years, but Osvaldo anonymously. For him, too, it is the first night of love in his life.
Bertolucci's intentions
Bertolucci's last film made in Italy, The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man , was more than a decade ago; he had turned away from the country disappointed and his next productions were about distant cultures. The upheaval that Mani pulite promised in Italy rekindled his curiosity about the country. Since he did not think the time was ripe for a continuation of his epic 1900 (1975), he wanted to learn to see the country again as if through the eyes of a foreigner, using it only as decoration in the next film. He also wanted to do something easy. The heavy-looking panorama format of the film was intended to compensate for the excess of lightness.
background
The film was shot near Chianti. The sculptures by the sculptor Ian are on the grounds of the estate. These sculptures were made by sculptor Matthew Spender . The shooting also took place at his country estate. The film had its world premiere on March 29, 1996 in Italy and was then a competition entry at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996 .
Criticism mirror
- Lexicon of international film : “ An all-round disappointing film, draped in an arts and crafts around a void of history. The stretched generation portrait with which Bertolucci returned to his Italian homeland spreads a lot of Mannerist Weltschmerz and even more boredom. "
- Süddeutsche Zeitung : “ An old man's film, a luxurious piece of cinema about the nostalgia of its creator. "
- The Neue Zürcher Zeitung sees “ a small catastrophe of old man's fantasy and lust for defloration that cling to a beautiful young girl. (...) A kitsch picture of a moonlit Tuscany, in which a couple of aged free thinkers verbally go to the laundry of a teenager. “In addition, in this film,“ the most sentimental beer seriousness makes the pose of poetic intellectuality. "
- Positif : “ The charm of the film is partly based on its modesty and the irony that goes with it. “And about the defloration scene:“ A soft exercise in which the illumination in this touching moment is directed towards the incredibly expressive face of Liv Tyler. "
- Fischer Film Almanach : Relaxed, light, airy and pleasantly effortless variations on the topic. All who see Lucy fall for her. (...) Nothing of the political analysis like in 1900 (film) or The Strategy of the Spider , no sexual dance of death like in The Last Tango in Paris , but pure film design: one beautiful shot after another, camera art that captures Tuscany like a garden of paradise. (...) Bertolucci celebrates Liv Tyler every moment. The film belongs to her, the camera eye feasts on her.
- The film magazine Zoom discovers “ unusual lightness and contemplative calm. (...) The master of the exorbitant effort and the grand gesture convinces this time with a silent film of self-reflection and the search for a valid way of life. "
- Rheinische Post : “ But this is what it looks like, the slippery male fantasy of an aging director who has nothing more to say to you and would like to grab his main actress under the skirt himself. "
Web links
- Stealing Beauty in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bertolucci in conversation with Positif, no. 424, June 1996, Paris, pp. 25-26
- ^ Positif, No. 424, June 1996, Paris, p. 26
- ↑ emotion and seduction. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 18, 1996
- ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 6, 1996, p. 48
- ↑ Positif, No. 424, June 1996, Paris, pp. 23-24
- ^ Fischer Film Almanach 1997. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1997, ISBN 3-596-13600-8 , pp. 154-155
- ↑ Zoom, No. 9/1996
- ^ Rheinische Post, September 27, 1996