La Luna

I actually auditioned for the role of the son when the mother was originally supposed to be played by Liv Ullman I think I read for it twice but was ultimately rejected because I looked too American in a Tom Sawyer kind of way-the boy who ended up doing it had a European quality in his face which Bertolucci wanted for the role. I saw it twice when it came out in the US, both times at the Loews Twin Cinemas. I remember it as having been gorgeously shot. The performances by Clayburgh and Barry are extremely good. Alida Valli is superb. The opera scenes were fantastic. Why isn't this out on DVD? Will we have to wait until after Bertolucci's death?

First off, you should consider that the two main themes of this film, back in 1979 would have been edgy and far more interesting than today. La Luna is the "eh, not great" story of a single mother who is distant from her child, and when she discovers that he's using heroin, she tries to fix it by becoming close. Very close. Excessively close. Bertolucci is a fine director and this is a old-skool film that has solid acting and a quality production, but storywise it leaves a lot to be desired. However, i would still advise you to watch it if you can, for one reason: it was almost entirely shot in Rome. Shot in 1979, back when there were no billboards, no traffic, and everything was still the way it had been for centuries, back when it truly was The Eternal City. In other words .. the locations are gorgeous. The rest, not so much. my vote: 7.5/10 for the location, 6.5/10 for the story.

Jill Clayburgh is curiously cast as the opera-singing mother of a teenage heroin addict whose motherly warmth towards her son has sensual overtones; however, even within this loose, frenetic, decadent scenario, Clayburgh manages to make the role work for her. She's courageous and colorful, even if it is rather difficult to believe those boffo operatic notes are coming out of Jill's rail-thin frame. Bernardo Bertolucci's provocative, pithy, sad and beautiful film is really something else. Bertolucci doesn't have much to say about mother-son relationships (incestuous or otherwise), but his portrait of a boy falling into an abyss, into a dangerous garden of different stimuli, is quite beguiling. Critics were sharply divided on "Luna" at the time. The picture does have a tendency to stray; it's inscrutable and demanding--and yet, taken as a purely visceral experience, there are moments which are breathtaking. *** from ****

I recall that both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel HATED this film, which they characterized as senseless meanderings in an incomprehensively large Italian villa by two characters about whom we care nothing. I chose to see it anyway, and absolutely loved it. Perhaps only a woman can relate to just how far a mother will go to redirect her son from a deadly path.

Not quite sure how I exactly feel about this film. As with a lot of Bertolucci movies, there are plenty of cringe-inducing moments, from the overblown Verdi opera scenes to Jill Clayburgh campily dancing around to rock music screeching "Oh yeah! In the 60s we believed in THINGS!!!" Taken as a whole, the movie is very uneven, psychologically muddled, heavy-handed and overlong. But there are haunting stretches in this movie which continue to resonate with me -- an opening passage where Clayburgh is biking in the night with her baby, and even smaller moments like the strangely beautiful shot of the teenagers skateboarding down the streets of Rome, or the kid dancing to "Night Fever". I would love to rewatch it and hope it get released on DVD. It's a fascinating entry in Bertolucci's work. A mess, but I think it's stayed with me more strongly than 1900 or Tango, though I think The Conformist still reigns supreme.

Jill Clayburg's acting was powerful and melodramatic as she attempts to use sex and herself to lure this disturbed son away from cocaine addiction. It gets almost pornographic and thereby uncomfortable to watch as the boy was only about 14. One could argue that he was an under-age actor who was being sexually exploited while Bertolucci was acting out some of his own problems while in psychoanalysis. On the other hand, such movie-makers do the audience a service in bringing incestuous behavior and psychology to consciousness, where it lurks unconsciously in most people. Mother-son seductiveness is not that rare but is mostly denied and rationalized.