San Francisco Examiner by Barbara Shulgasser
Tyler is a find for a director like Bertolucci. She is a blank slate of prettiness with her unadulterated, thoroughbred, long-limbed looks.
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Italy, France, United Kingdom · 1996
Rated R · 1h 56m
Director Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring Liv Tyler, Sinéad Cusack, Jeremy Irons, Jason Flemyng
Genre Drama, Romance
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Lucy Harmon, an American teenager, arrives in the lush Tuscan countryside to model for a sculptor 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.
San Francisco Examiner by Barbara Shulgasser
Tyler is a find for a director like Bertolucci. She is a blank slate of prettiness with her unadulterated, thoroughbred, long-limbed looks.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
For those who simply want to drink in the northern Italian countryside and Tyler's physical details, it's quite an experience. But as a story, Stealing Beauty (which Bertolucci wrote with Susan Minot) is a misbegotten, sentimental reunion with old European cinema.
The New York Times by Elvis Mitchell
This film maker's supremely tactile, sensual style and his taste for exoticism are captivatingly on display in Stealing Beauty, even if the film's philosophizing sometimes lacks the intellectual heft of a cotton puff.
What's more, Bertolucci's voice is stronger, clearer and more effortlessly confident than it has been in years. He's stolen the beauty of Tuscany and his youthful star and transformed it into an exquisite work of movie art.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
This film is aesthetically pleasing but not emotionally satisfying. It's occasionally erotic but rarely dynamic.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Though the film tapers off a little toward the end, there's a climactic scene of recognition between the heroine and her father that was one of the most exquisite pieces of acting I'd seen in ages.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
Bertolucci returns to his native Italian soil for the first time in 15 years, and the result is a gorgeous albeit fairly insubstantial homecoming.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
When Bertolucci points his camera out a window, it's like putting on your glasses. Everything is lush, drenched in color and right there for you to touch.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
In contrasting the sexuality and rebellion of Lucy's generation with his own, Bertolucci clearly yearns to rekindle his creative spirit.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
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.
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