Jill Clayburgh is curiously cast as the opera-singing mother of a teenage heroin addict whose motherly warmth towards her son has sensual overtones; however, even within this loose, frenetic, decadent scenario, Clayburgh manages to make the role work for her. She's courageous and colorful, even if it is rather difficult to believe those boffo operatic notes are coming out of Jill's rail-thin frame. Bernardo Bertolucci's provocative, pithy, sad and beautiful film is really something else. Bertolucci doesn't have much to say about mother-son relationships (incestuous or otherwise), but his portrait of a boy falling into an abyss, into a dangerous garden of different stimuli, is quite beguiling. Critics were sharply divided on "Luna" at the time. The picture does have a tendency to stray; it's inscrutable and demanding--and yet, taken as a purely visceral experience, there are moments which are breathtaking. *** from ****
Review of Luna
