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proximity as Caterina licks honey off her son may elicit unease, as it depicts a scenario where
the characters' roles are more akin to those of adult sexual fetishism than to those of parent
and child. Affectively, the film's recurring juxtapositions of inappropriate intimacy and
insensitive detachment are set in motion, with a harmonious middle ground permanently out
ofreach.
Transient empathic phenomena
In contrast to Caterina, Joe is a character with whom viewers might experience partial
cognitive identification, in so far as they recognize a lack of interpersonal relations and a
desire for social acceptance as causing his unhappiness. This brings occasional empathic
phenomena, generated by viewers 'using mental models and schemata from everyday
psychology 7 that allow them to simulate 'emotions in identification with an agent of fiction'
(Grodal, 1997: 87). This frequently occurs during Joe's fruitless attempts to obtain his
mother's attention, and his solitude in Rome, hi this context, the concept of the disorientation
of individuals who find themselves in artificial environments created by/for other people -
stylized, insular habitats which induce alienation - is a recurrent theme in Bertolucci's work.
It spans films ranging from The Spider s Strategem, in which Athos Magnani junior is drawn
into an elaborate mise-en-scene created by the inhabitants of Tara, to The Last Emperor,
which portrays Pu Yi's malaise in the Forbidden City, and it re-emerges in Bertolucci's later
films as protagonists such as Shandurai and Matthew experience disorientation in the
secluded, disquieting environments constructed by others in Besieged and The Dreamers, hi
La luna, Joe's disorientation leads him to drug addiction, whereas the extent of the emotional
distance between mother and son is emphasized during his birthday party, where Caterina
appears to be the only person unaware of Joe's feelings and situation. However, this fleeting
empathy with Joe is problematized by the incestuous attraction between him and his mother,
behaviour which is not articulated visually or thematically to elicit emotional involvement or
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