What's more, Bertolucci's voice is stronger, clearer and more effortlessly confident than it has been in years. He's stolen the beauty of Tuscany and his youthful star and transformed it into an exquisite work of movie art.

Filmmakers of Bernardo Bertolucci's magnitude don't often take on sexual coming-of-age movies, but judging from the pleasures of Stealing Beauty, maybe more of them should. [14 Jun 1996 Pg.04.D]

A model of poise and restraint, the film flows in a way that is deliberately undramatic, but made no less involving by the dreamy gentleness of its approach.

Bertolucci fans of old may well sigh for the political passion that made his earlier work more powerful. But the grace, craft and real wit in this country house party make it his most seductive film in a very long while.

Though the film tapers off a little toward the end, there's a climactic scene of recognition between the heroine and her father that was one of the most exquisite pieces of acting I'd seen in ages.

Tyler is a find for a director like Bertolucci. She is a blank slate of prettiness with her unadulterated, thoroughbred, long-limbed looks.

Can Tyler act? Impossible to say. Bertolucci's neatest trick is to have constructed the movie around Tyler's gawky unself-consciousness.

In contrasting the sexuality and rebellion of Lucy's generation with his own, Bertolucci clearly yearns to rekindle his creative spirit.

This film maker's supremely tactile, sensual style and his taste for exoticism are captivatingly on display in Stealing Beauty, even if the film's philosophizing sometimes lacks the intellectual heft of a cotton puff.

This film is aesthetically pleasing but not emotionally satisfying. It's occasionally erotic but rarely dynamic.

Poor Liv Tyler, the slight screen presence around which Bernardo Bertolucci's elaborately awful new romance revolves, comes prepackaged as Hollywood's next superstar, and she's hard-pressed to justify the hype.

The script (written by Susan Minot from a story by Bertolucci) suffers from the same tired blood as his characters, and his direction is often ponderously self-conscious.

This fragile, precious chamber piece, co-written with Susan Minot, rarely seems worthy of the high style lavished upon it. [24 Jun 1996 Pg.83]

In Susan Minot's goofy script, Tyler ministers to ailing writer Jeremy Irons and other artsy layabouts while searching for the man on whom to bestow her virginity. The climactic deflowering scene provides the only giggles in an otherwise stodgy mess.