There is beauty in this movie. The landscape, the light, the photography...but the people, oh the ugly people! A nastier bunch of lazy, hypocritical arseholes I've yet to see. Except for Jeremy Irons' character Alex, every one of them is a waste of space. The men sit around in the glorious Tuscan countryside moaning about their useless lives, hoping to de-flower Liv Tyler while the women drift around waiting on the men, knowing that the vapid Liv Tyler is hovering around like a mayfly, just waiting to be f****d. The men sniff around her like slavering, leering dogs on heat while she shows them her knickers and wafts clouds of pheromones in their direction, oblivious to the flames of lust (and possibly incest) she is fanning. How innocent she looks as she reveals her naked breasts for the artist, who isn't actually drawing her but intends making an ersatz Picasso-type sculpture from a lump of wood. Of course she has no idea that the artist just wants to see her tits and show her his idea of a good time. While she sits around waiting to be be de-flowered, she writes poetry on newspapers and then burns it. She writes "I wait I wait so patiently I'm as quiet as a cup I hope you'll come and rattle me Quick! Come wake me up." The only rattle she really wants to hear is from the bouncing rusty bed springs of course. That should wake her up pretty quickly. And of course she has no idea that every male in the villa is nursing an erection and wants to soak her in his gene pool. It's just a question of which one of these walking spermatazoa will reach the target first. In the end, she chooses the nice boy with morals and a conscience to lose her virginity with, and so "become a woman". How innocent, how beautiful, how unlikely. Not much of a story really, young virgin girl on holiday in Tuscany supposed to be having her portrait painted by a miserable bloke in a commune of middle aged bourgeois hippies. Or at least they would like to be hippies but they can't really be bothered. They smoke a lot of dope and talk a lot of rubbish. How do these people make enough money to be able to afford this beautiful Tuscan villa? They don't work, unless carving up logs with a chainsaw to make ugly sculptures is classed as work, they don't sell anything because all the ugly sculptures are scattered around the grounds of the villa, they don't DO anything except sit around all day. The art they make is ugly, the lives they lead are ugly and what they stand for is ugly. It's a shame really because there is some beauty in this movie. But too many beasts.
Review of Stealing Beauty
