Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I saw this movie back in 1998 and I remembered I like it, but watched it again today. It's actually a very good movie and has gorgeous scenery and makes you want to go to Tuscany. There is a lot of nudity of both sexes. Gross. I'm not a prude, I just don't like seeing certain body parts on the big screen. Double gross. Liv Tyler is really beautiful, but I think it takes something away from a movie when you see people's giblets and gravy. I wish that all movies just cut away from that stuff-we know what they are going to do!Anyway, the best scenes are between Liv Tyler and Jeremy Irons. There are a couple of scenes that are very weird-must be very Italian. The best part of the entire movie, however, is the house, its gorgeous. Except the ugly statues everywhere.

I didn't see this film when it first came out, because I kept reading these terrible reviews. One review has stuck with me, for 12 years. "Liv Tyler is the perfect piece of cardboard." I don't remember who said that, but that line kept me from seeing this film. This film was offered for free on cable on-demand, and since then, I've watched several times. Probably about 20 times. Why do I keep watching it? Because details are revealed each and ever time I see it. Things that I didn't notice before. Liv Tyler gives a very subtle and masterful performance in this film. Her character is experiencing things internally, and it would be inappropriate for her to be wildly expressive. Her character is reacting to her surroundings, but her reactions fall under the radar of normal viewing. The opening scene is shot on (what looks like) digital video by a man on the plane from America to Italy. I didn't notice at first, but, there is a close-up of this man's wrist, wearing a leather bracelet. Fast forward several scenes and this close up of this same bracelet appears on the wrist of this character "Carlo Liska"...and this leads me to believe that the man on the plane was this character "Carlo." But, back to Liv Tyler's character, "Lucy"...this character is a virgin, but that doesn't make her unsophisticated. She speaks Italian, smokes marijuana, and (really forward-thinking for 1996) fearlessly allows a man - a character of a writer (probably dying from AIDS) played by Jeremy Irons, to dress an open, bleeding wound on her knee. AIDS isn't mentioned, but it is implied. Making the subject of sex (circa 1996) that much more shocking. This is a dangerous activity, according to the zeitgeist of the 1990s. Life and death. I like to have this film just playing in the background, because the music is pleasant, and it's pretty much like being on vacation in Tuscany. It isn't a demanding film. It doesn't scream at you. It meanders from beautiful shot to beautiful shot, and having seen it 20 times already, I can leave the room and come back and it's still like a vacation in Tuscany. Naked, beautiful people on the surface, but there's more there if you choose to look.

Stealing Beauty is a character piece, not so much ever really driven by plot, and which makes it a particularly European-flavored entry in the Bernardo Bertolucci cannon of films he's made. This shouldn't be a surprise; the guy's been making them this way for most of his career, save for when he can't not have some semblance of a story (i.e. 1900 and Last Emperor, which were epics). It's got some purely luscious cinematography- thanks, in part, to the equally luscious and vibrant locations out in these Tuscan fields and villas and vineyards and homes, all secluded like in an over-elaborate dream- and some brilliant moments, though in the end it's almost something of a minor work for the director. The most admirable aspect is that he's able, in short, to make a contemporary movie that doesn't feel stuck in time.It's a 90's movie, with a hot-young-talent in her first role (I think it's her first), Liv Tyler, and in a way it works that she's not all that great in the part. Her awkwardness, her moments of sadness over her character's loss of her mother and the confusion over who her father really is, and the girlish and nearly overrated conundrum of still being a virgin, works to her ability as a 'first-timer', so to speak. And, luckily, she's surrounded by much better actors, people like Jeremy Irons who has a presence that is immense and cool even when bed-ridden for much of the film (thankfully it doesn't turn out how I originally thought the set-up would be with him wooing Tyler), and Rachel Weisz in one of her early roles as a woman who has reasonable suspicion her self-absorbed American husband is a lying/cheating louse. There are others as well, like the one who plays the old Frenchman (I forget his name), who's incredible as the old crank who can't bear to be where he's at.If it does feel like a minor work, as I mentioned, it's that Bertolucci- working from his original concept with a screenwriter- doesn't give very much depth to the situation, or to some of the characters, until a little more than halfway through the movie. For a while it feels like a shallow enterprise, the kind of "will she or won't she" attitude towards sex that should be above him. But at some point there's something that opens up a little bit, then a little more, and all the while as Tyler's Lucy becomes more aware of what matters the central conceit starts to become less and less like some big hurdle and something more natural. As well as this, Bertolucci does litter his film, which is uncharacteristically good in the present setting (he blends musical choices very well, from alternative rock to old R&B and classical and jazz) and has a couple of really tremendous scenes. The bit at the party where Tyler and a possible-father dance and the dancers all choreographed and strange come in, it's enthralling.Fans of the director should check it out, as should for those of the actors, but this being said it's almost kind of a light work. Lacking really hardcore dramatic tension, it's mostly predicated on a 19-year old girl's quasi-coming-of-age. Which is interesting, up to a point.

I was looking forward to seeing this film but I was disappointed. I found it dull, a random assembly of unlikely people gathered together in a house in Tuscany, the grounds of which were dotted with awful "sculptures", people entering scenes and dropping out, the whole generally going nowhere.The film didn't capture the beauty of the Tuscan countryside, it felt very detached from the film in my view, as if the characters had been plucked up and dropped down at this villa. Many of the characters I found stereotypical American or British (and Irish) and at the end of a tiring day, hoping for some spiritual refreshment, well I didn't get it from this film and frankly,I'd rather have had an early night.Liv Tyler looks beautiful (my boyfriend didn't think so) but that's about it.Not one to see again and this from someone who loves Italian cinema.