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(Loshitsky, 2010: 90-93) via arguments and counter arguments concerning its progressive
and reactionary impulses, the conclusion that I would draw from Besieged connects it with
films such as Last Tango in Paris. I will argue that Besieged is intellectually ambivalent, its
progressive elements losing their clarity on account of ambiguous behaviour by characters at
an intimate level and also because of a revelatory ending that privileges cinematic spectacle.
Lasdun's novel, set in England, features a South American woman who does
domestic work for a male English employer and landowner; in Besieged, Bertolucci transfers
both protagonists to a foreign country, making both of them outsiders and reducing the
novel's socio-political dichotomy between capitalist imperialism and colonial labour in
favour of a more existential discourse. Bertolucci's decision to transform the male
protagonist from an embodiment of European capitalism to a lonely individual estranged in a
foreign country positions Kinsky closer to Shandurai's vulnerable social condition; the
distance between the two is further reduced in the film in terms of class, because Shandurai is
not just a cleaner, as in the novel and as many Africans would be in real-life Italy, but she is
also a medical student. Her studies link her to a small but growing group of migrants
involved in higher education, a group with some prospect of a brighter future. This ensures
that she is perceived by viewers as less marginalized than many other foreigners and more
likely to eventually integrate into Western society. In the film, Shandurai has (at least) one
white friend - a fellow student Agostino (although his homosexuality also marginalizes him
in a society like that of contemporary Italy) while Kinsky only has contact with the children
attending his music classes. As a consequence, despite her situation, Shandurai is perceived
as less isolated and with more of a future that her employer Kinsky. The factors corroborate
Loshitsky's 'positive' interpretation of Besieged as 'an emancipatory film that tries to close
the gap between the two worlds' (Loshitsky, 2010: 91).
By contrast, it should also be observed that a status difference between the
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