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Section 5; Women at the Forefront
La luna (1979); lo hallo da sola/Stealing Beauty (1996); L 'assedio/Besieged (1998)
Within Bertolucci's body of work, these three films are characterized by their emphasis on
female characters as protagonists, namely Caterina, Lucy and Shandurai respectively. Yet,
paradoxically, none of these characters are as striking and memorable as figures such as Anna
Quadri, Jeanne, and Elizabeth (Pu Yi's first wife). One reason for this is perhaps that they are
inserted in relatively uncomplicated and undemanding narratives, and that - fundamentally -
they are cyphers through which Bertolucci identifies issues that go beyond the characters'
personal circumstances in the films. In particular, Caterina in La luna seems to function as a
symbolic representation of America and its film audiences, having seemingly become
unreachable for Bertolucci after the debacle of 1900, as Caterina is for her son Joe. Lucy, in
Stealing Beauty, represents the medium through which the film addresses the issue of the
female condition in consumer society; whereas through Shandurai, in Besieged, the director
returns to existentialist questions, this time linked to the human condition when estranged
through living in a foreign country. These elements affect the development of the three
protagonists in terms of their narrative importance; since they seem to be symbols
representing other, often intellectual agendas, this has repercussions on the viewer's affective
engagement with them, in the sense that even the empathic phenomena usually present in
Bertolucci's film-making are used sparingly and with varying results. In general, all three
films fail to engender much of a 'pro-attitude' towards characters, (Carroll, 1999:31)
although there are different degrees of intentionality on Bertolucci's part regarding this
outcome.
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