Do we leer when we watch films by Bertolucci and Woody Allen? Do you leer? For all their supposed investigation of the celebration of nubile women by middle aged and old men, neither filmmaker quite convinces me that he has quite the interest in these young women that all the artifice, music, flowers, lovely scenery, and other settings suggest. I know that actresses report liking to work with Mr. Allen, as do actors. I am aware that we no longer make that gender distinction but humour me for a moment. Bertolucci has a reputation for pushing actors to full disclosure, as it were. No one discloses anything here.I just saw "Stealing Beauty" for the first time this week during the summer 2012. I find it implausible that a large household of odd mostly male characters would devote a summer contemplating the virginity of a girl. Leering defines, I suppose, a theme for a film as much as any other topic. The loss of virginity seems to me the theme of adolescent films but a bit too much and too little for a film filled with randy old men but these old men seem long past being randy while the young men mostly seem nascent old me without substance.Roger Ebert as usual pins this film in his review. Read it. The men, young and old, lack substance and the nubile girl never becomes a person. Woody Allen usually suggests that the object of desire is a human being and an engaging one at that. Bertolucci does not bother. I rate his film highly because here Bertolucci perfects his leering.

All the delightful characters, so well developed, and the mystery sub-plot, perhaps help us old fellers feel not so guilty about watching teen Liv Tyler sport about in short, filmy dresses, or less. Yep, she's gorgeous. But where will this movie go? Will it follow its intrigues and conflicts to their resolutions, and thus show that it is more about story than underwear? As the answer to Juicy Lucy's mystery brings us to further interpersonal conflicts, will these be heeded? Unfortunately not. In the postscript to Lolita, Nabakov defines pornography (very soft, and quite pleasant, here) as successive escalations of eroticism to climax. Ultimately, in Stealing Beauty, that escalation takes over, as the director kills all art-house soap opera with the deflowering of his own movie's purported innocence, and with rather sudden ideal romance. Shouldn't we see a bit more flirtation between Lucy and her true love? As in even this softest porn, the rule is that story and character play second fiddle to sex. Story ends when the sculptor tells Lucy, 'This will be our secret.' He doesn't have to tell his wife! His wife isn't even more strongly driven to return to Ireland. Lucy has to continue to pretend she is merely a visitor. Doesn't she want to tell her sister, "You are my half-sister?" All that gets dropped, for a bit of sim-sex, that is supposed to feel like a climax.Oh, yeah, and the three long-distance shots of the villa: It was a little disconcerting to keep seeing Gladiator Maximus's villa, supposedly in Spain, here in Tuscany. But for a place 2000 years old, it was well preserved.

To comprehend this empty, meaningless drivel, one must accept, as do the characters in it, the premise that Liv Tyler is a veritable goddess of love. Unfortunately, as she is stultifyingly dull, inane, superficial, selfish, coy, and vapid, this is impossible. God only knows why Bertolucci cast her in this role, surrounded by others who can actually act. Not even consummate pro Jeremy Irons can make his fascination with this simpering whiner sound sincere.The story is as banal as she is: teenage Lucy (Tyler) returns to Italy to lose her virginity, dreaming of a sexy young Italian she met at 13. She does not delight in the Tuscan landscape, study art, or learn Italian, which she insists on pronouncing with an excruciating American accent. Lucy lodges with a fatuous English sculpture and family who live the kind of 'bohemian' life only available to the idle rich. The boys are beautiful (young Joseph Fiennes is stunning) and, their hormones raging, are after just one thing.The only thoughtful character is a middle-aged man dying of AIDS (Irons). His inexplicable presence and predicament may have been the director's idea of adding 'weight' to this fluff. He and Lucy become friends, though one cannot grasp why. Perhaps she admires his ability speak in sentences that parse. Her utter self-absorption is forgotten for a moment as he is whisked away to die in a hospital. But as soon as the ambulance is out of sight, pretty, perky, pouty Lucy quickly comes to her senses and returns to the task at hand: giving it up.The only other American in the film is a thoroughly odious entertainment lawyer who, when not on the phone making deals, cheats on his wife at every turn. Being within earshot, she always catches him. He follows her around and grovels.But back to Lucy! She is a relentless tease and remorselessly leads on her paramour. When the time comes, however, she spurns him with one last shrill whine of consternation, and flounces out of the room leaving him decidedly 'blue'.Bertolucci must have been in love to have been this blind.

The poetic tale of a girl trapped in her past which keeps her unavailable and sexually closed, and a study of the increasing urges and temptations that she feels pressuring her. Or: the story of who will have sex with a beautiful virgin first. It's a guessing game for the viewer: which one of the many male characters will deflower the Tyler girl? I'm sure Bertolucci sees this in a different light but then again he is a pretentious European director who would summarize the plot in a far more philosophical manner, looking at it from angles that don't exist. This is, after all, the same "genius" who made the ridiculously long, extreme-left-wing "1900", in an attempt to create movie history. (I suppose Depardieu and De Niro getting simultaneously masturbated by a prostitute is what everyone always wanted to see. Real art.) The camera-work, though it captures Tyler's good looks well, makes me suspect that either Bertolucci or the cameraman had lusted after her during the filming; sometimes the camera is so close to her it almost touches her. Rather plot less, but watchable. The dialogues strive for something powerful and meaningful and something... oh, je ne sais pas quoi I should call it - when in fact the dialogue is actually quite unremarkable and sometimes bordering on total malarkey. Anyone who takes this film too seriously is just as hopelessly naïve as Bertolucci hopes the viewer to be.