Besieged

The last time director Bernardo Bertolucci paired an eccentric recluse and a comely young thing to play house, the result was a masterpiece of ferocious eroticism. This effort, however, is no butter-slicked Last Tango in Paris but a cement-footed slow dance in Rome, its setting one of several echoes of the auteur's succulent but slender Stealing Beauty.

Thandie Newton (Beloved) gets the Liv Tyler treatment -- caressing close-ups, sensual reposes -- as an African medical student who flees her oppressive country for Italy after her husband is jailed. To make ends meet, she cleans for a kooky pianist (Naked's David Thewlis) who stalks every flick of her feather duster before proclaiming his love. Although she rebuffs him, he agrees to help free her spouse, and this arthouse odd couple strike a tentative truce.

With great grace yet uneven emotion, their interactions are wrought wordlessly, fluttering to life in the incandescence of Newton's delicate beauty. Thewlis, however, is miscast; he's too doughy, dopy, and effete to turn Bertolucci's visually playful, gossamer-thin love story into anything that feels believable, never mind besieged. At the Showcase (Route 6 and Warwick only).
-- Alicia Potter