Besieged (1998)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
While in exile in Italy, an African woman finds herself trying to get back home and free her imprisoned husband. But the only man that can help her do so is in love with her.
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Like Welles' The Immortal Story, this is a beautiful cameo from a mature artist.
In ways, they are reminders of the nameless lovers who meet in the empty apartment in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris; then they take the shape of the transgressive inter-familial lovers in Luna.
But "Besieged" has none of the physical sensuality of "Last Tango in Paris" - it doesn't aspire to.
Bertolucci, whose longtime associate Vittoria Storaro shot "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Last Emperor," certainly knows a good cinematographer when he sees one.
By Daniel Mangin May 21, 1999 | Bernardo Bertolucci describes "Besieged" as a "piece of chamber music for the cinema," the Italian director's way of acknowledging a sweep less operatic than that of previous works like "The Conformist," "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Last Emperor."
In ways, they are reminders of the nameless lovers who meet in the empty apartment in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris; then they take the shape of the transgressive inter-familial lovers in Luna.
It is the kind of small art story that Bertolucci seems to excel in more than with some of his more recent commercial ventures (“Little Buddha”/”The Last Emperor”).
BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI'S early reputation was built on elegant, cinematically complex explorations of obsessive love and self-destructive passion, often against a backdrop of political conflict, but over the years that reputation has been supplanted by the epic sweep and lush, voluptuous, color-drenched imagery that reached its peak in The Last Emperor.
Not a movie of great consequence like Bertolucci's Oscar-winning "The Last Emperor," it moves with the deliberate pace of European art-house fare.
Bertolucci, whose longtime associate Vittoria Storaro shot "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Last Emperor," certainly knows a good cinematographer when he sees one.
By Daniel Mangin May 21, 1999 | Bernardo Bertolucci describes "Besieged" as a "piece of chamber music for the cinema," the Italian director's way of acknowledging a sweep less operatic than that of previous works like "The Conformist," "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Last Emperor."
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It is the kind of small art story that Bertolucci seems to excel in more than with some of his more recent commercial ventures (“Little Buddha”/”The Last Emperor”).
After the slight but storybook-gorgeous slice of fairy-tale sweetness of Little Buddha and the misguided mix of first-love naivete and peekaboo flashes of pretty young flesh of Stealing Beauty, the oblique Besieged is a return to earlier concerns in an austere, stripped-down style.