Bertolucci used to be a decent film maker, somewhere along the frame of his career he got pathetic and pretentious, this is probably related to his acceptance by middle class theater patrons and Hollywood flunkeys after he won the Academy for "Last Emperor". I think after he left his Marxist principles and communist leanings, his films sunk to a new time low. Take for example, "Stealing Beauty", this must be the most pretentious and bloated of his works. This film is almost unbearable to watch, it is dreadfully painful even. The characters are nothing but a bunch of spoiled, irreverent, upper middle class pseudo-intellectuals and artists who live out in an Italian country side. Liv Tyler plays Lucy, a sheepish, spoiled teen who wants to lose her virginity as if brushing her teeth. The problem is that Tyler can't act, nor can she pass off as an incredulous youth. She simply is annoying to the point of our exhaustion with her. One thing good to say about this ostentatiousness is the film cinematography and color which is in contrast to the dull and ridiculous story, and the revolting acting. In every role Jeremy Irons is in, he castigates us with his foreboding and absurdly patrician methods. I've never liked him in any film, and in this one he isn't any better, he mumbles around with diluted solecisms. What more is there to say about this unbearable tripe in excess?
Review of Stealing Beauty
