The poetic tale of a girl trapped in her past which keeps her unavailable and sexually closed, and a study of the increasing urges and temptations that she feels pressuring her. Or: the story of who will have sex with a beautiful virgin first. It's a guessing game for the viewer: which one of the many male characters will deflower the Tyler girl? I'm sure Bertolucci sees this in a different light but then again he is a pretentious European director who would summarize the plot in a far more philosophical manner, looking at it from angles that don't exist. This is, after all, the same "genius" who made the ridiculously long, extreme-left-wing "1900", in an attempt to create movie history. (I suppose Depardieu and De Niro getting simultaneously masturbated by a prostitute is what everyone always wanted to see. Real art.) The camera-work, though it captures Tyler's good looks well, makes me suspect that either Bertolucci or the cameraman had lusted after her during the filming; sometimes the camera is so close to her it almost touches her. Rather plot less, but watchable. The dialogues strive for something powerful and meaningful and something... oh, je ne sais pas quoi I should call it - when in fact the dialogue is actually quite unremarkable and sometimes bordering on total malarkey. Anyone who takes this film too seriously is just as hopelessly naïve as Bertolucci hopes the viewer to be.
