Web posted on: Monday, June 21, 1999 3:32:37 PM EDT

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- Bernardo Bertolucci's films are often hailed as masterpieces the minute they hit the screen, and not always because they're actually good.

His lavish camera style leans towards the operatic, and that implies high art, whether the art is actually there or not. And his predilection for weightier topics -- sex, religion, politics and all their ramifications -- offers much-needed relief from the teeth-rattling explosions that sometimes pass for motion pictures these days.

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Theatrical preview for "Besieged"
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Mostly, though, Bertolucci's commitment to cross-pollinating David Lean's visual romanticism with the almost haphazard storytelling of the French New Wave is what everybody raves about. If you're into technique, his films are more interesting than 80 percent of what's out there. And if you can't be bothered with camera movement or fancy editing, they still look spectacular.

Although it has one of those 1960s "is it really over?" endings, "Besieged" is a welcome return to content from the man whose previous three films -- "The Sheltering Sky," "Little Buddha" and "Stealing Beauty" -- can best be described as lushly vapid. Visually, all the earmarks of Bertolucci's most popular works are here in "Besieged," from the colorful-but-faded production design of "Last Tango in Paris" to the graceful photographic glide of "The Conformist."

But "Besieged" contains a few wholly unexpected stylistic jolts.

Thandie Newton stars as Shandurai, a beautiful young woman who's living under an unspecified African political regime as the film begins. One day, Shandurai watches in horror as her outspoken schoolteacher-husband is dragged from his classroom by a group of government henchmen and carted off to prison.

Then we skip a couple of years to find her living in Rome, where she's attending medical school and working as a live-in housekeeper for Mr. Kinsky, a wealthy, eccentric pianist played by David Thewlis. Shandurai's days are filled with hard work and textbooks, but at night she's overcome with terrible nightmares about her past.

Through a series of gentle but extremely awkward gestures, it becomes apparent that Mr. Kinsky has a crush on Shandurai. This interracial-intercultural infatuation is a fine setup for a psychological study. And Bertolucci's evocative use of jump cuts and sudden slow-motion shots explicitly conveys the woman's hyper-intense existence. But the most interesting storytelling fillip is that the film's first 15 minutes contain no more than three or four lines of dialogue.

Bertolucci has always had a bent toward painterly art direction, and much of "Besieged" works like a thoughtfully designed exhibit: You take in individual moments as if they're another brush stroke from the artist. Normally, that sort of over-precision might make you cringe, but here the intensity of the performances injects substance into what could've been another exercise in attractive shallowness.

The music, which is nearly wall-to-wall on the soundtrack, plays an important role in delineating the characters' views of each other. Shandurai listens mostly to the string- and drum-filled music of her homeland (there's even a one-man African chorus popping up in her dreams).

Mr. Kinsky plays classical pieces on his piano and listens to jazz on his tape machine. There's a moment when he's improvising a Keith Jarrett-like piano piece that unexpectedly takes Shandurai's breath away, and it's a graceful, lucid transition to a new closeness in the pair's relationship. There's also a nicely downplayed sequence of discovery set to the John Coltrane Quartet's reading of "My Favorite Things."

Newton and Thewlis are remarkable. Newton has the easier role of the two, not because it's simpler in conception, but because the emotions that need to be dealt with are so explosive.

Shandurai lives day-by-day, trying to keep her mind off the whereabouts of her husband by immersing herself in her studies and systematically cleaning every square inch of Mr. Kinsky's rickety, sculpture-strewn home. Thewlis, on the other hand, gives courtly voice to a character who's so strange and emotionally fumbling he could have been rejected by the audience just as he (at first) is rejected by Shandurai.

The two strangers come together in sweet, somehow dark increments, as Shandurai begins to realize the lengths to which Mr. Kinsky will go to win her affection. That her husband is still out there somewhere, possibly living in a man-made hell, only adds to her confusion.

If a helping hand becomes a loving one, do you still reach out for it? That's the question asked by "Besieged." And although the answer is somewhat truncated, the journey to the final revelation is one of the more interesting ones to be taken at the movies so far this year.

"Besieged" contains violence, sex, nudity, and strong language. The visual texture of the film doesn't overpower the humanity, so the sexuality (for once) isn't there just for the fun of it. The film is for grownups who no longer require spoon-feeding, if any still are out there. Rated R. 92 minutes.