Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
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. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.
Stealing Beauty is a languid, sun-drenched coming-of-age story set in Tuscany that lives and dies by its atmosphere rather than its narrative. Bertolucci's camera captures the Tuscan landscape with genuine painterly beauty — the golden light, the villa, the rolling hills make the cinematography a genuine standout. The acting is competent, with a young Liv Tyler carrying the film adequately and Jeremy Irons providing warmth as the terminally ill writer, though performances are uneven across the ensemble. The plot is thin and meandering — Lucy's search for her father and her sexual awakening proceed without much dramatic tension or consequence, feeling more like a mood piece than a structured story. The ending resolves too neatly and quickly for the emotional weight it attempts to carry. As for novelty, it occupies a recognizable Bertolucci register of sensual European art cinema — distinctive in execution and setting but not radically singular.