Luna
(1979)
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Luna
(1979)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Jill Clayburgh | ... |
Caterina Silveri
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| Matthew Barry | ... |
Joe Silveri
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Veronica Lazar | ... |
Marina
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Renato Salvatori | ... |
Communist
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| Fred Gwynne | ... |
Douglas Winter
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| Alida Valli | ... |
Giuseppe's Mother
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Elisabetta Campeti | ... |
Arianna
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| Franco Citti | ... |
Man in Bar
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| Roberto Benigni | ... | ||
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Carlo Verdone | ... |
Director of Caracalla
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Peter Eyre | ... |
Edward
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Mustapha Barat | ... |
Mustafa
(as Stéphane Barat)
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Pippo Campanini | ... |
Innkeeper
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Rodolfo Lodi | ... |
Maestro Giancarlo Calo
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Sara Di Nepi | ... |
Concetta
(as Shara Di Nepi)
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Recently widowed American opera diva Caterina takes her teenaged son Joe with her on a long singing tour to Italy. Absorbed in her hectic work in various Verdi operas around Rome, Caterina is soon shocked to discover that her troubled and lonely son has become a heroin addict. Her desperate attempts to wean the youth off the drug result in an incestuous relationship, but also in a possibility to reunite Joe--maybe even herself--with his real father, whose existence she has kept a secret from him. Written by Markku Kuoppamäki
Not many discuss Bertolucci's La Luna as one of his most challenging films but I beg to differ. In 1979 I presume the film's campy allure had not been registered but today it's all to be seen; call it kitsch or ironic, but la Luna encapsulates two worlds Bertolucci tried to negotiate in most of his films - the world of appearances and surfaces against the inner world of the protagonist. La Luna plays both against each other as a masquerade, because what we think we are getting is not what we really are seeing. Bertolucci presents the first part as a post-Freudian fable in late 70s Rome where an Opera singer and her son indulge in an Oedipal relationship. Bertolucci then introduces the lost but real father to the scene as if to eradicate Freudian psychoanalysis as a spurious retelling of Greek myth. It seems the son only wants his father's recognition and love, while the mother is marginalized. It's a very masculine thesis for Bertolucci, one that reinforces the illusory fundamentals of Patriarchy, while negating the matriarchal as a mere bypass to the final journey(father's love).
Jill Clayburgh's acting is off-key most of the time but this unwittingly invests the film with its latter-day camp quality, while Matthew Barry looks dazed and confused throughout the entire film. Rome is undoubtedly the best part of the film as well as the sumptuous visuals that capture its sun-drenched beauty and decaying but grand monuments.