June 10–17, 1999

movie shorts

Besieged

In Bernardo Bertolucci's latest disturbing film, two displaced, lonely people — English pianist David Thewlis and African medical student Thandie Newton — live in his big old house in Rome. The house is a great setting: stairways, windows and dumbwaiters provide all kinds of voyeuristic opportunities. He spends his days composing, she cleans in exchange for rent and misses her husband, imprisoned back home. When Thewlis develops an intrusive, obsessive interest in her, the script — by Bertolucci and Clare Peploe — grants him a respectable means of expression: He sells his considerable art collection to purchase the husband's freedom. Newton is understandably troubled, put off by his attentions, dedicated to her studies, both thrilled and afraid that her husband might be returned to her. Thewlis and Newton's increasingly erotic relationship is seriously afflicted by colonialist power-tripping, but it's difficult to tell where the film stands on this. It seems to have shock-aspirations reminiscent of Last Tango in Paris (with the needy guy/sensuous woman dynamic), but it is fraught by unresolvable race, class and national identity issues.

—Cindy Fuchs