Besieged begins in Africa where we see the teacher husband of Shandurai (Thandie Newton) being dragged away from his classroom by the military to her obvious distress. Next we find her in Rome, a servant to eccentric English pianist Mr. Kinsky (David Thewlis). She's studying part-time for a medical degree. And she looks extremely pretty polishing the staircase. He plays classics on his piano, she listens to contemporary African beat. But a slow sexual tension builds between the two culminating in a moment of truth.
Some moments of anticipation in the cinema are doomed to disappointment. Besieged is one of those moments. And you wonder why a filmmaker of such past power would stoop to such slight and superficial material. The film is almost exploitative as it lingers on Thandie Newton's luminous eyes, her breasts.
But where is the political resonance to this film? Sure there's the politics of sex but dealt with so simplistically in comparison to Last Tango in Paris. It almost seems obscene for the film to use the victim husband as a plot point so that it can concentrate on the slow simmer happening in Rome.
David Thewlis blew our minds in Naked, but he hasn't really had a role since to suit his singular talent. Besieged certainly doesn't offer it to him. Thandie Newton is beautiful as ever but she's merely an object of beauty.
I wonder whether we're unfair to Bertolucci because of his masterful past.
David's comments:
How desperately sad to see a director of Bernardo Bertolucci's stature involved in such dross – Stealing Beauty was mundane enough, but this is just terrible. Thandie Newton is sympathetic and does her best with an unbelievable character (the one mark's for her), but David Thewlis is horrendously bad in an impossibly silly role. Added to which the hand-held camera work is hideous and the editing horribly jarring. A new Last Tango, I don't think so.
