Stealing Beauty

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Critics were decidedly mixed about this 1996 drama from Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and the movie enjoyed only a brief theatrical release. Now it's best known for its early appearance by Liv Tyler as a 19-year-old beauty named Lucy who summers at a villa in Tuscany with a variety of artistic types who immediately respond to her inspirational innocence. An amateur poet who has decided it's time to lose her virginity, Lucy has come to Italy after the death of her mother, who visited this artist's refuge 20 years earlier. Several young Italian men find Lucy quite heavenly (she is, after all, Liv Tyler), and she's not immune to their attentions, but she'd rather spend time with a playwright (Jeremy Irons) who is dying of AIDS and therefore has something other than sex on his mind. The movie's plot is about as substantial as Tyler's character (she's sexy, all right, but hardly an intellectual muse), but Stealing Beauty creates a serene mood that's so soothing you'll want to book a flight to Tuscany immediately, just to soak up the setting's idyllic atmosphere. If you're in the right frame of mind, this movie is like a balm for the soul, and Tyler and Bertolucci can share the credit for making this two-hour vacation so charmingly relaxing. --Jeff Shannon

Description

Director Bernardo Bertolucci explores one girl's personal journey into womanhood in this romantic adventure starring Liv Tyler and Jeremy Irons.

Customer Reviews:

One of my Favorites.......2007-08-07

I first saw this movie several years ago, and fell in love with it. The story is nice and entertaining, but it's the setting that truly captivates. A young Liv Tyler stars in this movie, and she goes to visit friends of her late mother in Italy. They have a villa in the countryside, housing an amusing mix of eccentric people living the life. Tyler is there supposedly to have her portrait done, though she also has the hidden motive of discovering the identity of a man in one of her mothers poems whom she believes may be her true father. She also seeks love, and it is a fun tale saturated with a heady golden sunlight, flecked with terra cotta sculptures as much a part of the house and land as the residents. I've watched it many, many times since then, and the effect is never lessened. I highly recommend it.

What happened to Bertolucci ?.......2007-06-12

This is what I think every time I watch his later work. Is it really the same Bertolucci who made "La Commare Secca", and "The Conformist", and "The Spider's Stratagem" ? What happened to this director who certainly had a genius and could have been on a par with the Italian giants: Fellini, Antonioni and Pasolini ?

This film is yet another example of a pitiful deterioration that began somewhere in "1900" and progressed through "The Sheltering Sky" and "The Last Emperor".

Often it seems to have been shot by a young amateur. A bunch of not particularly interesting people stuck in a country house, an American virgin trying to have it - there isn't really much to work with. The characters, with a possible exception of that of Jeremy Irons', are shallow, often annoyingly so.

There are too many people, there is no time to explore any of them. The guy who lives deluding himself into thinking that he is a sculptor, is outright pathetic, given the miserably low artistic level of his "work".

There isn't really much to write about. If you are a Bertolucci fan, then you should probably see it. Otherwise, you wouldn't lose or miss much.

There are some occasional sequences which reminded me of Bertolucci as he used to be. It has been a pleasure to see Jean Marais. The Italian countryside is of course beautiful. What else ? Well, that's about it.

It is a grossly overrated, pathetically pretentious low-grate production, in my humble opinion. Those bows to Antonioni's "The Red Desert", with paint-games, and to "Blow Up", with the pantomime actors who are as extraneous to the film as so many other things, only make the show more woeful.

I continue to hope that Bertolucci will come to his senses and remember that he probably still has his genius buried somewhere deep inside. Perhaps, it is a vain hope - but miracles do happen sometimes...

Tuscan Inspiration.......2007-05-07

Stealing Beauty is a must see for every teenage girl with a passion for art and life. The best review I can give of this film is to relate my personal experiences. I first saw Stealing Beauty when I was 17 and at an arts boarding school for dance. In the wonderous and confusing time of late teen female years, standing on the precipice of when to become a woman and how long to hold onto childhood this was the first movie I could identify with. I am an un-American minded American girl and to watch the weaving story of Lucy (Liv Tyler) amongst a variety of artists living in the warm Tuscan hills of Italy trying to find the answers to the secrets her mother left behind and come to terms with virginity and love, I was deeply touched. This movie is one of the reasons I waited for all of my first experiences to be with a man I truly loved and now we are planning our wedding in Florence, Italy!

YES!.......2007-01-23

One of the best movies of all time! Bertolucci captures it all: everything is well-rounded, every intimate moment realistically captured, the scenes, the emotion, the beauty and the avant guarde. This is avant-Guarde cinema at its best, it doesn't isolate the viewer, but wholeheartedly brings them into a brave new beautiful world. Lucy is leisurely looking for her father, life and love in an isolated arts commune in Italy. You will forget where you are and how you think you should be living after seeing such free and open beauty of people and interchanging lives. Gorgeous!

Stealing Beauty.......2007-01-17

This is a GREAT movie! I LOVE the soundtrack! This movie is a fav of mine and got me into TripHop. DaveC

Average customer rating:

Anywhere But Here / Stealing Beauty
Starring: Carlo Cecchi , Sinéad Cusack , Joseph Fiennes , Jason Flemyng , and Anna-Maria Gherardi
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci , and Wayne Wang
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000KGGIVO
Release Date: 2006-12-05

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Anywhere but Here: In Wayne Wang's star-driven adaptation of Mona Simpson's tragicomic bestseller about a mismatched mother and daughter, fortysomething Adele August (Susan Sarandon) is every adolescent's nightmare: over-(or under-)dressed, always and loudly "on," forgetful of mundane matters such as bills, more colorful kid than reliable mum. In contrast, 14-year-old Ann (Natalie Portman) yearns for stability, roots, understated hues. Transplanted from Wisconsin small town and extended family to a Beverly Hills, California, address of choice for American Dreamers like Adele, Ann comes painfully of age--sometimes blighted but also enriched by the fictions of a charismatic parent afraid to be alone in the dark.

Wang has always shown a sure, caring hand when it comes to cross-generational angst (see Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, The Joy Luck Club, Smoke). Here, he encourages Sarandon in a remarkably brave, exposed performance as an aging adventuress whose imagination continually outstrips her ability to make dreams come true, whose charm is both her ticket to ride and a dead end. Portman's pout of strained adolescent distaste soon wears thin, but when The Phantom Menace's kabuki princess momentarily thaws, she projects a lost child's terrible shock and confusion. Hollywood-sized and scripted by the numbers, Anywhere but Here lost ground to Tumbleweeds, a similarly themed but more nuanced indie (with Oscar-nominated Janet McTeer), and it can't hold a candle to Barbara Stanwyck's Stella Dallas (1937), top of the line in this particular genre. But for any daughter who's looked into her mother's face and--yikes!--seen a possible future, this trip's definitely worth taking. --Kathleen Murphy

Stealing Beauty: Critics were decidedly mixed about this 1996 drama from Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and the movie enjoyed only a brief theatrical release. Now it's best known for its early appearance by Liv Tyler as a 19-year-old beauty named Lucy who summers at a villa in Tuscany with a variety of artistic types who immediately respond to her inspirational innocence. An amateur poet who has decided it's time to lose her virginity, Lucy has come to Italy after the death of her mother, who visited this artist's refuge 20 years earlier. Several young Italian men find Lucy quite heavenly (she is, after all, Liv Tyler), and she's not immune to their attentions, but she'd rather spend time with a playwright (Jeremy Irons) who is dying of AIDS and therefore has something other than sex on his mind. The movie's plot is about as substantial as Tyler's character (she's sexy, all right, but hardly an intellectual muse), but Stealing Beauty creates a serene mood that's so soothing you'll want to book a flight to Tuscany immediately, just to soak up the setting's idyllic atmosphere. If you're in the right frame of mind, this movie is like a balm for the soul, and Tyler and Bertolucci can share the credit for making this two-hour vacation so charmingly relaxing. --Jeff Shannon

Average customer rating:

Stealing Beauty
Starring: Carlo Cecchi , Sinéad Cusack , Joseph Fiennes , Jason Flemyng , and Anna-Maria Gherardi
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00008G7UL
Release Date: 2003-01-14

Description

Director Bernardo Bertolucci explores one girl's personal journey into womanhood in this romantic adventure starring Liv Tyler and Jeremy Irons.

Rites of Passage 3 Pack (Garden State / Stealing Beauty / Thirteen)

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Rites of Passage 3 Pack (Garden State / Stealing Beauty / Thirteen)
Starring: Fox 3pak
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
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Forrest Gump (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)

ASIN: B000ICM5KI
Release Date: 2006-12-26

Description

Includes the following titles:

Description

Jack Kemp, former secretary of HUD, and Roger Altman, former deputy secretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration, discuss potential tax cuts and their impact on the economy. Then, author Mary Gordon talks bout The Shadow Man, the memoir of her search for the truth in her late father's life and in hers. Finally Filmmaker and director Bernardo Bertolucci, who made his reputation 22 years ago with movies about politics and in 1972, with his film, Last Tango in Paris, talks about his new movie, Stealing Beauty.

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Stealing Beauty [Region 2]
Starring: Carlo Cecchi , Sinéad Cusack , Joseph Fiennes , Jason Flemyng , and Anna-Maria Gherardi
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000284916

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