Stealing Beauty

Stealing Beauty
Directed by	Bernardo Bertolucci
Produced by	Jeremy Thomas
Written by	Susan Minot Story: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring	Liv Tyler Joseph Fiennes Jeremy Irons Sinéad Cusack D.W. Moffett
Music by	Richard Hartley
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Editing by	Pietro Scalia
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	March 29, 1996 May 16, 1996 June 14, 1996
Running time	113 minutes (theatrical) 119 minutes (DVD release)
Country	Italy France United Kingdom
Language	English French Italian Spanish German
Box office	$4,722,310

Stealing Beauty (French: Beauté volée; Italian: Io ballo da sola) is a 1996 drama film directed by Academy Award-winning Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci and written by Bertolucci and Susan Minot. It stars Liv Tyler, D.W. Moffett, Jeremy Irons, and Rachel Weisz. The film focuses on an American teenage girl who travels to a lush Italian villa to stay with family friends of her poet mother who recently committed suicide. The film was actress Liv Tyler's first lead role, which garnered her critical attention, and because of this, is often seen as a starting point for her film career.

While the film takes place in Italy, the primary language spoken by the characters is English - however, Italian, French, Spanish, and German are also spoken by several of the characters through the course of the film.

Stealing Beauty premiered in Italy in March 1996, and was officially selected for the 1996 Cannes Film Festival in France in May. It was released in the United States on June 14, 1996.

Plot

Lucy Harmon, an American teenager, is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa there. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted. Lucy's mother has committed suicide since then, and she also hopes to discover the identity of her father, whom her mother hinted was a resident of the villa. Once she arrives, Lucy meets and befriends a variety of eccentric locals who were companions of her mother, and begins to form relationships and connections with each of them. Lucy has decided to lose her virginity and becomes an object of intense interest to the men of the household, but the suitor she finally selects is not the initial object of her affection.

Cast

• Liv Tyler as Lucy Harmon
• Sinéad Cusack as Diana Grayson
• Donal McCann as Ian Grayson
• Rebecca Valpy as Daisy Grayson
• Jeremy Irons as Alex Parrish
• Jean Marais as M. Guillaume
• Rachel Weisz as Miranda Fox
• Joseph Fiennes as Christopher Fox
• D. W. Moffett as Richard Reed

Soundtrack listing

1. Hooverphonic: "2 Wicky" (written by Burt Bacharach)
2. Portishead: "Glory Box" (written by Geoff Barrow)
3. Axiom Funk: "If 6 Was 9" (written by Jimi Hendrix)
4. John Lee Hooker: "Annie Mae"
5. Liz Phair: "Rocket Boy"
6. Stevie Wonder: "Superstition"
7. Nina Simone: "My Baby Just Cares For Me" (written by Walter Donaldson)
8. Billie Holiday: "I'll Be Seeing You" (written by Sammy Fain)
9. Mazzy Star: "Rhymes Of An Hour" (written by Hope Sandoval)
10. Cocteau Twins: "Alice"
11. Lori Carson: "You Won't Fall"
12. Sam Phillips: "I Need Love"

Hole's song "Olympia" (AKA 'Rockstar') was also used in the film. Tyler was shown dancing and singing wildly along to the track, listening with her headphones and walkman.

Critical reception

The critical reception for the film was mixed, with some critics praising the Italian setting and the slow pace, while others criticised it for its apparent self-indulgence, and lack of character development and drama.

According to Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave it 2/4 stars, "The movie plays like the kind of line a rich older guy would lay on a teenage model, suppressing his own intelligence and irony in order to spread out before her the wonderful world he would like to give her as a gift....The problem here is that many 19-year-old women, especially the beautiful international model types, would rather stick cocaine up their noses and go to discos with thugs on motorcycles than have all Tuscany as their sandbox."

Critics such as Desson Thomson of the Washington Post, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, and James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave negative reviews, with Berardinelli in particular, calling the movie 'an atmosphere study, lacking characters', and Thompson calling it 'inscrutable'.

Others, such as Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, Janet Maslin of The New York Times, and Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times were more positive, with Rosenbaum in particular praising the movie's 'mellowness' and 'charm'.

The film currently holds a 51% or 'Rotten' rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Although of the mixed reception to the film, Liv Tyler's performance was met with critical acclaim, making the movie her breakthrough role.

External links

• Stealing Beauty at the Internet Movie Database
• Stealing Beauty at AllRovi
• Stealing Beauty at Rotten Tomatoes
• Stealing Beauty at Discogs