Stealing Beauty (1996)

2 years ago

Stealing Beauty (1996)

STEALING BOOTY

by Tess Lynch

When I was sixteen or so, I was hanging out with my oldest friend one summer in Connecticut. We’d been friends since we were two or three — our parents were neighbors in New York City, and then happened to move to the same tiny corner of rural Connecticut — and though we rarely saw each other anymore, we used to get drunk off of anything in her parents’ liquor cabinet (this time: sambuca), hide out in the converted garage that constituted a sort of teenage sin den, and watch movies. She had cute boys for neighbors, and when we were sufficiently sauced we’d venture out in the hot mugginess of her yard and wait for one of them to amble down so we could talk to them for a few minutes, usually with some level of bitchy competition between us, and flirt until the mosquitoes became too horrible to deal with.

On one of these nights, AW pulled out Stealing Beauty. It had been out for two years or so, and was rumored to be porny; Liv Tyler’s naked knees on the cover of the VHS whispered to us, “Yes, I will show you my breasts later. No, this movie probably isn’t brilliant. But you don’t care, do you?” We did not care.

The reason Stealing Beauty is not brilliant, at least in my estimation, is the same reason that it is enjoyable: it isn’t that it’s necessarily less than the sum of its parts (formidable is an understatement, as it was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and co-written by Bertolucci and Susan Minot, and boasts a pretty impressive cast as well), it just has a meandering message; as far as substance goes, it’s more on the meringue end of the spectrum than the pound cake. The Dreamers, a similarly beautiful film, features a plot that alternates between sexy bits, nuances of romantic relationships, and a specific time and place (an American in Paris circa 1968) that has its own dramatic sociological implications. But Stealing Beauty? It’s a quiet film, a character study. It’s a simple movie. It does not pretend to be much else.

The source of tension in this movie lies in the complexity of relationships, and there are many relationships to dissect here: Lucy (Liv Tyler), armed with a book of her deceased (suicide) mother’s poetry, goes to rural Italy and stays with her mother’s friends. Her mother, who was a poet, fraternized with a lot of eccentric artists who had created a sort of artists’ commune in Italy, and Lucy intends to get her portrait painted by one of them — her father? Or is her father one of the other artists at all these fancy art parties in Italy? I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter. Solving this mystery is secondary to what has really drawn Lucy back to Italy, following a visit four years prior: she wants to lose her virginity to this sexy beast named Nicolo, with whom she’d made out and briefly corresponded.

The above paragraph doesn’t matter, though, you see. After you watch Stealing Beauty, you’d be hard pressed to remember anyone’s name or what they did or how their character related to anything at all. Here is what you’ll remember: breathtaking scenes of vineyards and hillsides. Rachel Weisz, who is usually in some state of undress, lounging by a pristine pool. Jeremy Irons being a sexy convalescent. Liv Tyler drooling on a bus, doing some of the best acting of her career (so said the Liv Tyler fan! It is real, honest, un-self-conscious drooling, people!). It captures something magical about the years between fifteen and twenty, something best expressed as an awareness of the possibilities of being a beautiful young thing alone in the world. The highs (and lows) of experiencing oneself as an autonomous being, the fear and thrill of becoming an adult, are all captured here as well as I’ve seen other than The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, which in many ways is this film’s male counterpart.

So there you have it. I am telling the whole internet that I love Stealing Beauty. It’s kind of a big step. But you may notice that most of the folks who will razz you for enjoying this romp haven’t seen it yet. I had the VHS hidden behind some legit, unembarrassing movies for a long time. When my boyfriend discovered it, on our second date, I was concerned that he would never stop LOLing at what a loser I am. “She looks just like her mother in that dress,” he quoted, and that was basically when I knew we were in love.

Tess Lynch is a freelance writer and actress living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.