Stealing Beauty

Stealing Beauty follows Lucy Harmon, an American teenager who travels to the Tuscan countryside after her mother's death. She stays at a villa belonging to old family friends, where she hopes to reconnect with the Italian boy who kissed her four years earlier. Her visit also carries a more private purpose: she wants to identify her biological father, and a puzzling entry in the diary her mother left behind may hold the key. The household she joins is made up of expatriate artists and intellectuals whose lives have grown listless, and the arrival of the open, unaffected young woman stirs them. She forms a particular bond with Alex, a writer living at the villa.

Bernardo Bertolucci directed the film from a screenplay by Susan Minot, with Jeremy Thomas producing. It was released in 1996 and sits between Little Buddha and Besieged among the director's features, following earlier works such as The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky. Liv Tyler plays Lucy, alongside Sinéad Cusack, Jeremy Irons, Jason Flemyng, Joseph Fiennes and Carlo Cecchi.

Produced across the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States and France on a budget of about 10 million dollars, the film earned roughly 5 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.5 out of 10 from around 32,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7 from more than 600 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 places it close to those audience scores.