Rating: 
Summary: it's my favorite, but not for everyone
Review: you may not, but i love this movie. the characters are solidly interesting and well-played, the storyline is simple but itriguing, and it has simply beautiful scenery.
Rating: 
Summary: A Beautiful Vacation
Review: In this 1996 film, Liv Tyler makes her stunning debut. Set to a soundtrack that is a good mix of quintessentially '90's music (a la Portishead and Liz Phair) and retro classics (like "My Baby Just Cares For Me" and "I'll Be Seeing You,"), this film takes both Liv's character, Lucy, as well as the viewer, on a journey into mystery and enchantment. Lucy embarks on her journey to Italy after the death of her mother, a famous poet and artist. She travels there in search of greater knowledge about her mother, who spent a brief few weeks there one summer. But what Lucy really uncovers in Tuscany are the answers to secrets in her past. And, as the film goes on, she discovers more and more about herself, and the woman she is to become. This film is a great, slowly paced meditation on sex, love, art and self-awareness. When Lucy finds out that she was "conceived" in the olive groves of the artists' villa there, her curiosity deepens and the search for her birth father becomes one of the main goals in her journey. Faced with the loss of a future with her mother, Lucy is looking towards the past for information about those she loves, for knowledge about herself and where she came from, and for hints about where this might lead her as she takes on the life of an adult.The film begins with shots of Lucy sleeping on the train on her way to Tuscany. There is even one devilish strategic close-up shot of her jeans which is perhaps explained later in the film when it is revealed in a comical exchange between Lucy and Jeremy Irons' character that the beautiful 19 year old Lucy is a virgin. Unbeknownst to Lucy, she was being taped on her journey by a fellow passenger on the train. But he gives her "beauty" back to her in the form of the videotape. Her fate is still in her hands. From there, the film follows several slow, melodic plot lines, one of which is the attempt to find the perfect first sexual partner for the young and much-loved Lucy. Liv plays a perfect beauty here. She is innocent, touching, bright, curious, and passionate, and as the film goes on, she takes a cue from the artists at the villa and becomes and more free in her expression, more comfortable in her own skin. But she is also careful. She wants her passion to be shared with someone worthy of it, someone who gives as well as takes. It takes a while for her to find out who that perfect catch is, but as in life, the story is what happens while she is waiting for the "pay-off." Her curious habit of striking a match to each finished poem and burning it up seems to say that she is not yet confident in her artistic abilities, that she wants to keep some things sacred, private. She is cautiously awaiting sharing herself on a deeper level with those whom she grows to love. Jeremy Irons' character, a man struck by illness in the most beautiful of places, is a nice offset to the virginal beauty of Tyler. Together, they bring the film full circle from youth and glowing health to the natural course of death and dying. The attention they pay to one another is mutual. Lucy in this way is wise as well as youthful. The countryside in this film is magical. The vineyards of Tuscany, with the glowing sun above, are lovingly captured by Bertolucci. The film is as much an ode to youth and innocence, and the inevitable loss of it (which I think Bertolucci is saying can also be beautiful) as it is to the Italian countryside. Others in the film who have gone on to receive wide acclaim and appear in such movies as Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Swept From the Sea, and The Mummy are the two British actors Joseph Fiennes and Rachael Weisz.
Rating:
Summary: subtle and sensuous drama
Review: Liv Tyler vividly conveys Lucy's ambivalent feelings about sex and her responses to the uneasiness of her elders in the presence of such youthful innocence. Stealing Beauty demonstrates that director Bernardo Bertolucci is as adept at intimate drama as he is with epic productions.
The movie is erotic and engaging, as well as visually lush.
This is also a movie for every girl who wished losing her virginity had been more pleasant.
Say under a tree on a hilltop in Tuscany with a shy, gentle, compassionate boy after spending a week at a vineyard having probing and interesting conversations with a dozen artists and writers.
Rating:
Summary: One of my Sunday night favourites
Review: I am not a film critic or a student of Bertolucci's work. I was simply looking for an interesting, character-driven movie and I certainly found it in Stealing Beauty. I was completely charmed by Stealing Beauty.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Lucy Harmon, played by Liv Tyler, is a young American woman returning to a commune of artists in Italy following the death of her mother. The residents are led to believe that she is there to have her portrait carved by the owner, an old sculptor friend of her mother. However, Lucy is really searching for two men, the adult version of the boy she fell for four years earlier and her nameless biological father.
Many of the characters she encounters at the villa are intrigued by her innocence and virginity. They represent a spectrum of personalities stretching from Richard, the womanizing American lawyer to Alex, a talented English playwright dying of AIDS who becomes her mentor. The story is fun and intricately simple like Lucy herself.
The ensamble cast in this movie is simply amazing. Every character is well played and feels rounded and real. Shot in the hilly countryside, the scenery is absolutely beautiful. The movie is filled with incredible shots of italian country gardens, olive groves and rolling hillsides.
In the end, I would recommend this movie to anyone looking for a beautiful setting full of uniquely beautiful people and a not so stressful plot.
Rating:
Summary: Only boring to the action crowd-Ecstacy to film lovers
Review: I have to address the boredom issue. This movie is boring, ONLY if you like and are used to big blockbuster films like Spiderman. Or maybe you are a Hillary Duff or Reese Witherspoon fan. But, if you like cinematic greats and you wish to think while watching a film, then you won't be bored. Liv Tyler is beautiful, but that isn't what makes this film beautiful. It is the director, it is Italy, it is the scenery, it is the the observance of the sensual in life, and yes also the story. I worked at Blockbuster while in college and every person who was too lazy to read a back cover would ask for my recommendation and when I suggested this movie or to name a few-Titus, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Laurel Canyon, Swimming Pool, Frida, Last Temptation of Christ, Personal Velocity-they would ask to see it and when I took them to the single box-they were put off. So, what I'm getting at if you like popular movies, action mostly, and find it hard to read a back cover than yeah this movie would bore the hell out of you. To the rest of you. It is inspiring in its beauty and like a good novel it stays with you in your mind and soul. It is a beautiful gem and I want to move to Italy and hang out with my bohemian friends now!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: SOMEONE STOLE THE PLOT
Review: We bought this film because we were planning a trip to Italy and would be visiting the home where the party scene was shot. (By the way, the home belongs to a charming vintner and is on many of the tours - complete with wine tasting.)
The scenery in "Stealing Beauty" is lovely - great cinematography. However, sorry to say that we found the storyline a bit tedious. We kept thinking, "Get on with it." (Whatever "it" was going to be).
If you're looking for a compelling story line that holds your attention, better look elsewhere. However, for those simply wishing to savor the nubile beauty of Liv Taylor plot may not be required.
Rating: 
Summary: Stealing Boredom
Review: Bertolucci used to be a decent film maker, somewhere along the frame of his career he got pathetic and pretentious, this is probably related to his acceptance by middle class theater patrons and Hollywood flunkeys after he won the Academy for "Last Emperor". I think after he left his Marxist principles and communist leanings, his films sunk to a new time low. Take for example, "Stealing Beauty", this must be the most pretentious and bloated of his works. This film is almost unbearable to watch, it is dreadfully painful even. The characters are nothing but a bunch of spoiled, irreverent, upper middle class pseudo-intellectuals and artists who live out in an Italian country side. Liv Tyler plays Lucy, a sheepish, spoiled teen who wants to lose her virginity as if brushing her teeth. The problem is that Tyler can't act, nor can she pass off as an incredulous youth. She simply is annoying to the point of our exhaustion with her. One thing good to say about this ostentatiousness is the film cinematography and color which is in contrast to the dull and ridiculous story, and the revolting acting. In every role Jeremy Irons is in, he castigates us with his foreboding and absurdly patrician methods. I've never liked him in any film, and in this one he isn't any better, he mumbles around with diluted solecisms. What more is there to say about this unbearable tripe in excess?
Rating: 
Summary: [bad]
Review: I have better things to do than spending two hours watching Liv Tyler on a cliche' quest to lose her virginity to some Italian dude. >Yawn<
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