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and confusing experience for mainstream viewers. It is a tendency that again emerged in
Bertolucci's short film Histoire d'Eaux (2002).
The film marks a return to the director's origins, being shot in black and white and
possessing a style that combines Pasolini's neorealism with lyricism. Thematically, it re-
proposes the notions in Gina's apologue in Before the Revolution about time not existing and
about a lack of fulfilment when people's lives become materialistic. The apologue's Buddhist
monk and his disciple are transformed in the short film into a modern day immigrant who is
thrown out of a truck together with other illegal immigrants, into the Italian countryside. The
story's theme remains the same with the disciple/immigrant sent off in search of water. He
becomes sidetracked and is gradually drawn into a range of life experiences; he falls for an
Italian girl who provides him with a job, a house and a son. When the symbol of the
immigrant's socio-economic achievement a car crashes, he disconsolately wanders
through a wood, where he finds his mentor still waiting for the water. The immigrant then
kneels, suddenly aware of the ephemeral quality of time and life. Although the film's
intention appears that of sketching a situation suspended between reality and a dream, the
denouement of the immigrant seemingly re-embracing his ascetic former values appears
incongruent with the generally positive narrative sequence of the serene encounter between
two cultures. This is symbolized by the immigrant's integration into Italian society, and by
his family life and working environment absorbing elements of his culture. Bertolucci
asserted that with this short film he aimed to 'help people replace their fears about diversity
with curiosity and then love.' (Socci, 2003: 19). But the denouement he gives to the story
seems another example of how the film's socio-political standpoint is dissolved by the
director's propensity for a coup de theatre, rather than for a coherent resolution both in
narrative and moral terms; consequently, he manages to surprise viewers, but at the price of
leaving them with an ambivalent perception of the social discourse unfolded by the film.
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