Luna is a dreadfully poseurish film, whether Caterina, stopping at the gate to the Villa Verdi, improbably apostrophizes the filmmaker's favorite composer, or whether the neurotic homelife of mother and son is shown in the most superficial terms despite all that sensationalistic detail. Human behavior is treated capriciously and mechanistically, so that actions arise not out of psychological necessity or, failing that, some narrative logic, but out of Bertolucci's presumable desire to purge, without in the least clarifying them, his personal problems. We do not learn what the violence and vandalism on screen are really about, and seem to be getting would-be catharsis without confession, coming to terms without coming to grips, ad astra (or ad lunam) without per ardua.

Interestingly, it was a homosexual writer, André Gide, who first capitalized on the acte gratuit, and that, significantly, while still pretending to a heterosexual existence. I cannot presume...