`Stealing Beauty': Vapid Bertolucci Travelogue

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X 1/2 "Stealing Beauty," with Liv Tyler, Sinead Cusack, Carlo Cecchi, Jeremy Irons, Jean Marais, Donal McCann. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, from a script by Susan Minot, based on a story by Bertolucci. Guild 45th. "R" - Restricted because of nudity, drug use, language.

If ever you want to challenge the conventional wisdom that Europeans are more sophisticated than Americans, try arranging a double bill of Bernardo Bertolucci's latest movie and Amy Heckerling's "Clueless."

Both movies star teenage actresses who achieved fame in music videos. Both are coming-of-age tales in which adults play significant roles. Both take place in highly specific, richly contemporary settings that encourage the actors to relate to the scenery.

Yet "Stealing Beauty," the latest work of one of Europe's most respected filmmakers, is a vapid deflowering saga that makes its star look like a snooze. (French critics have already dubbed it "Sleeping Beauty.") "Clueless," the creation of the same woman responsible for the "Look Who's Talking" series, is a witty, generous comedy that also functions as a vibrant showcase for its star.

In other words, Liv Tyler is no challenge to Alicia Silverstone, at least not in the context of Bertolucci's story of a 19-year-old American virgin, Lucy Harmon (Tyler), who spends a liberating summer in Tuscany. Four summers before, while visiting friends there, she kissed a boy (Roberto Zibetti) who kept up a correspondence for a brief time, and she wants to renew the acquaintance.

In the interim, her poet-model-mother has committed suicide, and Lucy sets out to clear up some puzzles from the woman's writings (it seems that her mother wrote "transporting little verses in-between fashion shoots"). Lucy is having her portrait created by her mother's close friend, Ian Grayson (Donal McCann), whose home is a gathering place for expatriates.

Grayson's wife (Sinead Cusack) plays hostess to an art dealer (Jean Marais), a dying writer (Jeremy Irons), an advice columnist (Stefania Sandrelli) and a philandering entertainment lawyer (D.W. Moffett). There is much nude swimming ("It's too unnatural," complains Irons), much mirror-licking and pot-smoking, and quite a bit of giddy sex talk.

"There's a virgin in the house!" exclaims one character. "I like it when you're mad," says an excited lover.

The English-language script by U.S. novelist Susan Minot ("Monkeys," "Lust and Other Stories") has enough awkward lines like that to suggest that it's the work of a foreigner unfamiliar with English. The filmmakers want you to think Henry James and Chekhov, but you're more likely to be thinking Jacqueline Susann, dodgily translated.

Worst of all, it takes 118 mostly uneventful minutes for Lucy to follow through on her suspicions about who her father was, for her to find various ways of winking at the mildly decadent goings-on, and for her to find a lover. Well, the scenery's pretty.

If you're among those who already view Bertolucci's recent movies as overblown travelogues (see the Forbidden City in "The Last Emperor," visit Morocco in "The Sheltering Sky" and Nepal in "Little Buddha"), you'll feel more than justified in your suspicions when you visit "Stealing Beauty."

If, on the other hand, you remember him as the brilliant talent that created "The Conformist" and "1900," you may find this latest evidence of artistic decline simply unbearable.