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elongings, and his silent, secretive gaze on her daily routine, Bertolucci places the character
on the edge of normality. The house's architectural features are therefore used within the
narrative to generate emotional tension as they facilitate Kinsky's obsessive, fetishistic
behaviour, a factor which also creates cognitive uncertainty for viewers regarding the lengths
to which his fixation may go. Towards the end of the film, the house also possesses a
significance beyond its role in the film's mise-en-scene; the divesting of the house in the final
stages of the story is a visual metaphor for the way Kinsky rids himself of his past complexes
and psychological 'baggage" in order to embrace new, positive life perspectives.
As regards the film's sets, it is worth noting an interview in which Bertolucci warned
against comparisons with the apartment set of Last Tango in Paris, emphasizing two
fundamental differences between the films. In Last Tango in Paris, it is the characters who
divest themselves, not the house, and the male character is characterized by a desperate
sexuality, not by an intense sensuality (Mirabella-Pitiot, 1999: 79). Additionally, this chapter
posits that the secluded sets of the two films hold opposite meanings. In Tango, the apartment
occupied by Brando's character Paul is used as a barrier against the outside world, where
society, with its web of formal and stereotypical behaviour patterns, is guilty of stifling true
emotion and genuine human contact; in Besieged, Kinsky's alteration of his living
environment is indicative of a man who is breaking down barriers to open himself up to the
outside world. Therefore, the ensuing analysis emphasizes the links between Kinsky's
gradual and positive change of perspective towards life and the progressive denudation of his
house.
Different forms of narration and empathic phenomena
To heighten the sense of strangeness surrounding Kinsky's character, narrative information
regarding his past is relatively restricted. The causal gap related to the circumstances which
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