Besieged, the latest film from director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor), is a non-formulaic love story about two people living lives of gentle desperation in alien surroundings. Thandie Newton (Beloved) plays Shandarai, a gifted medical student who fled her home in an unnamed African country after her husband was imprisoned for teaching his students to question the benevolence of the nation’s new leader. She cleans house for Kinsky (David Thewlis), living in the downstairs servant’s room of an Italian residence he inherited from an aunt. A talented but reclusive English pianist and composer, he suffers from stage fright, and only plays for himself and the handful of young, often less-than-appreciative proteges whose lessons pay his bills. But he has fallen hopelessly in love with Shandarai, an obsession to which she’s completely unresponsive upon learning of it with his first and only clumsy overture -- the physical kind, not the musical. When asked what it would take to earn her love, she can only blurt out, “Free my husband from prison!” Crestfallen, not only at the knowledge she’s married but the impossibility of the task, he sets out to accomplish it anyway.

The plot of Besieged is expressed largely through images and music -- a melange of world beat, a score by Allesio Vlad, and Ry Cooder -- using dialogue sparingly. Beginning with the opening credits, and reappearing several times throughout the film, a gangly African minstrel materializes to comment on the story in songs much more varied than you would think possible to coax from the simple native harp he plays. In so doing he begins to alter Kinsky’s music too, which in turn has an influence on Shandarai’s feelings.

It’s a beguiling movie that once again proves European directors rarely take the cheap, easy avenues so common in Hollywood, telling an unusual love story, and at the same time taking a fascinating look at the culture of expatriate Africans in Europe. Call this a date movie for the coffeehouse crowd. B+

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page