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any allegiance towards the character is unlikely to develop. These cognitive and affective
responses are triggered from Richard's pseudo-poetic utterances onwards, the film showing
him as he removes his swimwear - in an aggressively exhibitionistic gesture - and dives into
the swimming pool where Lucy is.
Hints of Richard's tendency to dominate and exploit within his sexual relationships
are given when the camera peeps through Miranda's bedroom window on two occasions and
portrays their intercourse as an act in which he gratifies himself crudely without any care for
his partner. Significantly, on the second occasion, Richard is shown fantasizing about
deflowering Lucy as he sodomizes Miranda - this is evident from his distant, glazed look,
which ignores his partner. Low-angle shots of his body towering over Miranda's are intercut
with repeated close-ups of his hands as they grip the bed frame, his bestial panting filling the
soundtrack. The scene's disturbing nature is compounded as Miranda is shot frontally, and
this reaction shot of her distress, emphasized as her hands grip the bed-head to brace herself
against the pain, highlights Richard's focus on his own pleasure. These two kinds of
voyeurism - the cynical (Carlo Lisca) and the brutal (Richard Reed) - both imply the kind of
rapport that Pollock identifies as existing between the 'spectator-buyer' and 'the picture of
woman' created by male-oriented pornography, this being one of a 'forceful intrusion or
indeed possessive voyeurism inviting rape'(Pollock, 1995:142). By making Richard into a
source of voyeurism, Bertolucci elicits a more general evaluation of his social behaviour; his
violent attitude during the sexual act can arguably be interpreted as one of the last remaining
opportunities for men who feel uneasy in their relationships with independent and successful
women, to reaffirm their dominance. Richard's final dialogue with Miranda, which is
discussed later in the chapter, sustains this interpretation.
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