La Luna (1979 film)
| La Luna | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Bernardo Bertolucci |
| Screenplay by | Giuseppe Bertolucci Clare Peploe Bernardo Bertolucci |
| Story by | Franco Arcalli Giuseppe Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci |
| Produced by | Giovanni Bertolucci |
| Starring | Jill Clayburgh Matthew Barry Veronica Lazar Renato Salvatori Tomas Milian |
| Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro |
| Edited by | Gabriella Cristiani |
| Music by | Ennio Morricone |
Production companies | Fiction Cinematografica 20th Century Fox |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date | September 30, 1979 |
Running time | 142 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5 million[1] |
| Box office | $68,204,193 |
La Luna, also known as Luna, is a 1979 Italian American film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Jill Clayburgh. The film concerns the troubled life of a teenage boy and his relationship with his parents, including an incestuous relationship with his mother.
Plot
Joe (Matthew Barry) is the son of famous opera singer Caterina Silveri (Jill Clayburgh). While he believes that Caterina's husband, Douglas Winter (Fred Gwynne), is his biological father, the truth is that Joe was sired by Caterina's former lover, who is now living in Italy and working as a schoolteacher. Joe, moody and spoiled, needs a strong father figure to guide and discipline him, but Douglas is aloof and largely indifferent to parenting. When Joe witnesses the sudden death of Douglas in New York City, it leaves him angry and distraught. Caterina, unwilling to continue residing in Manhattan after Douglas' death, decides to move to Italy with her son. There, Joe begins associating with a dangerous crowd and becomes addicted to heroin.
Caterina is heartbroken and hopes to lure her son back to a safer and more healthful lifestyle. She tries in many instances to get closer emotionally to her son hoping that increased contact will prevail over the allure of the drugs. She even contacts his drug dealer to ask for sympathy for her situation. At one point, when Joe is desperate for a fix, his mother masturbates him just to get his mind off drugs temporarily.
Seeing no other alternative, she decides to drive to the location they originally lived, where her estranged lover lives with the hope that some sort of fatherly bond will cure her son. Along the way, tensions, some sexual, derail and prolong the trip. Eventually the son is dropped off at the ex's home, but Joe, rather than telling his father that he is his son, says that he is instead a friend of his son, and that his son overdosed on heroin after lifelong turmoil over the absence of his biological father. With some sort of closure achieved for the boy, he returns to his mother, who is preparing for an opera. Embracing, they reaffirm their love for each other, and together the son and his father, who has come to watch the performance, and who now knows Joe's true identity as his child, hear Caterina sing at her very best.
Cast
- Jill Clayburgh – Caterina Silveri
- Matthew Barry – Joe Silveri
- Veronica Lazar – Marina
- Tomas Milian – Giuseppe
- Renato Salvatori – Communist
- Fred Gwynne – Douglas Winter
- Alida Valli – Giuseppe's Mother
- Elisabetta Campeti – Arianna
- Franco Citti – Man in Bar
- Roberto Benigni – Upholsterer
- Carlo Verdone – Director of Caracalla
- Peter Eyre – Edward
Reception
In his two-star review, the critic Roger Ebert wrote of Bertolucci "He's got a soap opera and a Freudian case history (traditional enemies in their natural states) and he's forcing them to copulate".[2]
In the London Review of Books, Angela Carter wrote of Jill Clayburgh's performance "Jill Clayburgh, seizing by the throat the opportunity of working with a great European director, gives a bravura performance: she is like the life force in person".[3]
In an entry dated 7 September 1979, Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky wrote in his diary, "Saw Bertolucci's La luna. Monstrous, cheap, vulgar rubbish."[4]
The movie was banned in Ecuador in 1980 by Abdalá Bucaram, then police intendent.[5]
References
- ^ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, Scarecrow Press, 1989 p259
- ^ "Luna 1979". Roger Ebert reviews. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
- ^ "Angela Carter responds to Bertoucci's La Luna'". London Review of Books. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
- ^ Tarkovsky, Andrei (1991). Time Within Time: The Diaries 1970–1986. Seagull Books. p. 205. ISBN 81-7046-083-2.
- ^ "El auge y caída del 'porno chic' en Guayaquil". El Comercio (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-11-15.