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That this sequence was written, probably rehearsed, filmed, and made the film's final cut
implies an intentionality that does not square with the director's 'incomprehension' of it.
Explanations for its inclusion will remain speculative without further comment from
Bertolucci or his production team, and the spectre of Clare Peploe's co-direction of the film
and its uneven effect on the style of La lima may come into consideration. What are less
debatable are the affective, cognitive and intellectual consequences of the inclusion of both
scenes and their lack of coherence and narrative justification.
Elsewhere, the film's sexuality and eroticism are, in line with Bertolucci's work,
visually characterized by lingering voyeurism, ambivalence and by transgression but rarely in
a progressive, liberating sense. This is a tendency already discussed in terms of Marcello
Clerici's re-enactment of Giulia's seduction by her uncle in The Conformist, the visual
objectification of Jeanne/Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris, the voyeuristic camerawork
of the sex scenes in 1900, the social circumstances affecting the sexual intimacy experienced
by Kit in Tire Sheltering Sky (and Shandurai in Besieged), and the ambivalence of Ttie
Dreamers in all these contexts. The eroticism in La lima analysed, for example, in terms of
the nudity of Joe and Caterina in certain scenes, is charged with this same ambivalence which
centres on the uncertain extra-diegetic motivations of the director and also those of the
diegetic characters. This occurs in the sequence depicting the visit of Caterina's friend
Marina whose loudness causes Caterina to urge her to speak quietly because Joe is sleeping.
Bertolucci cuts to an image of him; his naked body, framed from a high angle, is slightly
curled up at the centre of a bed covered with red linen. The framing is more evocative of an
object of desire than of an exhausted drug addict who has overslept. This ambivalence
increases in a subsequent scene portraying Marina's sexual attraction for Caterina, who
undresses and takes a shower under Marina's desiring gaze. Consequently, when Marina
enters the shower cubicle to console Caterina as she weeps, the scene's aftermath is steeped
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