Stealing Beauty -

Beautifully shot, but rather pointless drama Liv Tyler stars as Lucy, a 19-year-old American who visits the Italian countryside with two things in mind. She searches for her real father, through clues her free spirited mother left in her poetry. She also yearns to find the boy who first kissed her four years earlier, for, you see, she plans to lose her virginity on this trip, and she imagines he would be the perfect one to do it. Tyler doesn’t do much acting in the film. She mainly wanders around, and lets the camera capture her beauty, in the same detached way it caresses the beautiful countryside. Kudos go to Darius Khondji, the cinematographer on the film. The film’s only true depth is in the relationship between Lucy and a dying playwright (Jeremy Irons) also staying at the villa. He is passing out of life, just as she is starting hers. He is smitten by her charms, but knows anything beyond friendship is impossible. The complexity of their relationship surpasses anything else in the film. The rest just goes to show that beauty is only skin deep.