Stealing Beauty (1996)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Written by Bernardo Bertolucci & Susan Minot
Starring Liv Tyler, Jeremy Irons, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Donal McCann

Features:

• Featurette
  
• International trailer and 3 television spots
  
• Fox Flix (Trailers for other Fox movies)
  

Anamorphic: Yeppers.

My Advice: Back Away From It.

Lucy’s (Tyler) father has sent her to Italy to have her portrait painted by an old family friend. Lucy has other motives for being in Italy, however. You see, her mother has recently committed suicide, but she left behind a poem about Lucy’s conception, which leads Lucy to try to find her biological father. But Lucy has other things on her mind, too. Like sex, for example. Lucy is 19 and a virgin. (I only mention this because a great deal of the dialogue in this movie is about her virginity.) Some years before, when Lucy had visited Italy, she had fallen in love with a young man named Nicolo (Roberto Zibetti) and has returned in the hopes that she can make up for lost time. With the help of Alex (Irons), she finds herself and learns a little bit about love.

This movie is filled with some amazing actors doing some pretty mediocre work. I never really felt anything for any of these characters. The dialogue is choppy (and mostly in Italian with no subtitles) so you it’s really hard to follow the arc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to having to work to watch a movie (in fact, I prefer it, in most cases), but there had better be a payoff when the movie is over. I should have either learned something, or at the very least, be shown what I was working for. This movie gives you neither. The characters in this movie become so obsessed with Lucy’s virginity that you begin to think that the movie is all about that. It’s not until very late in the film that you discover that she is looking for her father. The bummer is I can’t talk about the other reason I thought this movie was about her virginity without giving away more than I think I should in this review. As always, Irons is wonderful. His character is the only one that I really had any sympathy for. He plays a dying writer who becomes enamored of young Lucy. The cinematography is quite beautiful, but after awhile, you get the idea that you could point the camera in any direction in Italy and get a breathtaking shot without having to expend much effort. It’s like a little vacation to Italy.

The DVD itself can’t even rescue this film because it doesn't pack a lot of feature firepower. The featurette lasts about 10 minutes and is full of little snippets of the actors talking about what an amazing director Bertolucci is. Regardless of what you might think of Bertolucci, a featurette which is nothing but a love fest would be really boring if it were long enough for you to get bored with! So, the only thing you are left with on the DVD are the trailers and TV spots.

So, as you are walking down the aisle of your favorite movie rental house, stop by this one, pick it up, admire Liv Tyler on the cover (if that’s your cup of tea), and put it right back down again. Pick up something else. Anything else.