Stealing Beauty

A 1996 coming-of-age drama with a romantic thread, Stealing Beauty was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, who wrote it with Susan Minot. French audiences knew it as Beauté volée, Italian ones as Io ballo da sola. A co-production of France, Italy and the United Kingdom, it was released in Italy in March 1996, selected for the official programme of the Cannes Film Festival in May, and opened in the United States on 14 June 1996.

Set over a Tuscan summer, the story centres on Lucy Harmon (Liv Tyler), a nineteen-year-old American who travels to a villa near Siena after the recent suicide of her poet mother, Sara. Her mother's artist friends have invited her. Lucy first visited four years earlier and shared her first kiss there with Niccolo, and hopes to grow close to him again. Among older artists she becomes an object of desire and inspiration, while facing the secrets of her own past and the pains of growing up. Jeremy Irons plays Alex, Sinéad Cusack Diana and Jean Marais M. Guillaume; Stefania Sandrelli, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes and D. W. Moffett also appear.

Filming took place entirely in Tuscany in the summer of 1995, mainly at the Castello di Brolio estate and a small villa on its grounds. It is the last film in which Jean Marais appears.