She is a very theatrical person totally in control on stage but not as effective off stage. Absorbed in her hectic work in various Verdi operas around Rome, Caterina is soon shocked to discover that her troubled and lonely son has become a heroin addict. It is enough that they are rare and difficult to access. While he believes that Caterina's husband, Douglas Winter , is his biological father, the truth is that Joe was sired by Caterina's former lover, who is now living in Italy and working as a schoolteacher. Bertolucci had turned erotic cinema into a respectable art form. The early scenes in Italy are filled with humor and a warm, earthy palette that supports visually the wonderment of exploration of adolescence.
At one point, when Joe is desperate for a fix, his mother masturbates him just to get his mind off drugs temporarily. I saw this on Cinemax in the early, good old days early 1980s when it aired great movies, especially foreign films. The truth is that Bertolucci seems to be pushing the limits with no other purpose than to see how far he can go. We keep thinking of gravity. Recently widowed American opera diva Caterina takes her teenaged son Joe with her on a long singing tour to Italy. But all of these elements not only not blend well but they literally clash, collide and collapse especially in the last section of the film when Bertolucci attempts to justify his out of control storyline with the most preposterous Oedipal explanation.
Caterina, unwilling to continue residing in Manhattan after Douglas' death, decides to move to with her son. Una de las grandes pelÃculas de Bernardo Bertolucci que causó gran polémica en su estreno. When the film was originally released, it was a major box office and critical disappointment but it has gained a cult following and an almost mythic reputation of being a seriously misunderstood film. What I want to know is whatever happened to the hauntingly handsome then-youngster Matthew Barry? An elegant production -- not one lame or wasted moment. Embracing, they reaffirm their love for each other, and together the son and his father, who has come to watch the performance, and who now knows Joe's true identity as his child, hear Caterina sing at her very best.
He gives Jill Clayburgh what may be her most extravagant role, as Caterina, a suddenly widowed New York opera singer who, in frenetic mourning, flees to Rome with her adolescent son, Joe Matthew Barry. Her only child, a teenage son Matthew Barry accompanies his parents to a plush rental home in Italy, where Clayburgh's opera career has taken her, and where his biological father lives. In La Luna, Bertolucci includes characters that break into spontaneous and bizare behaviors similar to the characters on Last Tango in Paris, but he also adds other elements of Hollywood films like Rebel Without a Cause and even Saturday Night Fever. But such acts are still a cinematic taboo and not even the most character-driven or artistically-relevant representation can dim the potency of seeing them enacted. In 2007, Deborah Kampmeier premiered her 1950s-set Deep-South drama Hounddog, starring as a nine year-old rape victim. Along the way, tensions, some sexual, derail and prolong the trip.
The opening sequence consisting of a flashback with Caterina riding a bike while her baby stares at her lovingly against a moonlit sky is not only poetic but also quickly establishes the powerful bond between mother and son, which will become the focus of the story. Bertolucci goes as far as including a very ugly scene in which Joe, realizing he is out of syringes desperately tries to shoot up the drug by stabing himself with a fork. Composer Ennio Morricone leaps at the chance to play to the back row, and delivers one of his least subtle scores. Bertolucci introduces some ridiculous scenarios, as in Caterina scouting heroin from her son's drug dealer, a hysterical scene in which Caterina releases her anxiety in a Jane Fonda-like workout routine with her apparent lesbian friend, and that infamous but also ridiculous mother-son masturbation scene. Her Caterina is both seductive and tragic.
Her desperate attempts to wean the youth off the drug result in an incestuous relationship, but also in a possibility to reunite Joe—maybe even herself—with his real father, whose existence she has kept a secret from him. I have tried, but been unable to, buy it, sad to say. New York Times wrote: No matter how civilized we Americans think we are, we find it nearly impossible to walk with both feet off the ground at the same time. This is a fantasic film with a fantastic manuscript. Seeing no other alternative, she decides to drive to the location they originally lived, where her estranged lover lives with the hope that some sort of fatherly bond will cure her son. If anything, Bertolucci is using the drama of drug addiction as a catalyst for the story of incest. As she immerses herself in the busy rehearsal schedule, she fails to notice that Joe has fallen in with a bad crowd and has developed an addiction to heroin.
I love his way of directing and I think this film are one of the highlights from his career. Bertolucci intercuts Caterina at work in an opera house with elegant gliding camera moves and Verdi on the soundtrack. She even contacts his drug dealer to ask for sympathy for her situation. The film concerns the troubled life of a teenage boy and his relationship with his parents, including an incestuous relationship with his mother. There, Joe begins associating with a dangerous crowd and becomes addicted to.
In an even more desperate attempt to wean him off the drug, Caterina masturbates Joe into climax try to justify that to a medical doctor , which leads to a full exploration of her incestuous attraction to him. Language:English and Italian Subtitles:partial English 2012-06-20. The saga is of Jill Clayburgh as Yank lyric star afflicted with professional neuroses, fading pipes, a son on drugs and a close-to-incest mother-son development. He could have had a promising film career, based on his good looks and his performance in Luna. The film became a box office success, earned favorable reviews and was nominated for many respectable awards. With some sort of closure achieved for the boy, he returns to his mother who is preparing for an opera.
Is unfortunate that it all works out this way because lost in this mess is a very interesting Jill Clayburg performance which earned her a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination in 1980. Jill Clayburgh, Matthew Barry Luna 1979 La Luna 1979 original title La Luna, also known as Luna, is a 1979 Italian film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Jill Clayburgh. La Luna Year: Director: Stars: , , , , , , , , Genre: , Rating: 2 from 3 votes Review: Bernardo Bertolucci is very well known for his sweeping epics such as 1900 and The Last Emperor and for pushing into the mainstream the limits of serious erotic cinema. I disagree and see it more as a badly conceived, but highly entertaining guilty pleasure, produced by a generally brilliant filmmaker, who needed time off from reality. Once again there is no hint on why such a relationship develops. Variety wrote: La Luna is a spectacle-sized melodrama filled with a variety of themes — plots and subplots that merge asymmetrically into a melodramatic mold.