Besieged
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Year Released: 1998
Rating: 2.5
Intellectually feeble but visually sumptuous film from Bertolucci about an African woman (Thandie Newton) who works as a housemaid for a pianist (David Thewlis) in Italy. At only 90 minutes, it feels like a warm-up for the director - whose films are usually more sprawling and intricate - but the atmosphere is borderline claustrophobic, trapped for the most part in a gorgeous but dusty and aging apartment, and the preference for music over conversation is in direct opposition to standard chat-happy cinema. I can sort-of see where Mr. Ebert's hostility is coming from - the characters are underdeveloped and their relationship is vague - but Bertolucci's not trying to make a statement about race, exactly - he's making a statement about how useless art can be in the face of political strife and, of course, love.
