Luna, La

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Year Released: 1979
Rating: 2.0

Following the death of his father (Fred Gwynne), an opera diva (Jill Clayburgh, a little over-the-top) and her son (Matthew Barry, out of place) travel to Italy where the son takes up heroin and the mother takes up incest. The concept is so out-of-reach it's as if Bertolucci realized he couldn't film it 'straight-forward,' opting for a more 'artificial' or even surreal approach: the mother and son do equal amounts of sudden shouting and sudden cuddling/kissing/groping, all of which belies any serious psychological motivation. The result is equal parts strange and compelling and almost comically ridiculous, which is incidentally what I thought of Bertolucci's equally perverse The Dreamers. Sometimes when you try for the outlandish you get a Last Tango in Paris, sometimes you get this. Win some, lose some.