Luna (1979)

What makes Luna special is how Bertolucci turns a scandalous premise into a feverish, operatic meditation on grief, desire, and the terrifying lengths love can go when it’s cornered. The film moves with sensual elegance through Italy—color and music swelling like emotional weather—while Jill Clayburgh gives a fearless, galvanizing performance that makes Caterina feel less like a headline and more like a human being unraveling in real time. It’s seducing and repelling in the same breath, staged with painterly confidence and a restless physicality that keeps you watching even when you want to look away. Fair warning: the sexual and drug content is explicit and transgressive enough that it won’t be for everyone, but if you can handle discomfort in service of bold, expressive cinema, Luna is the kind of film that lingers like a haunting aria.

Luna is Bertolucci reaching for a grand, operatic psychodrama about grief, addiction, and a mother’s desperate need to “save” her son, staged with the kind of lush European atmosphere he’s famous for. The problem is that the story leans hard into Freudian shock tactics and soap-opera turns, so if you need emotional logic and believable behavior, it can feel overwrought and oddly unconvincing rather than tragic. The incest-adjacent sexual material and explicit drug use aren’t just “edgy” window dressing—they’re central, lingering, and likely to feel exploitative if you’re not on the film’s wavelength. If you can tolerate a messy, provocative narrative for the sake of mood, performance commitment, and audacious themes, there’s something to engage with; if not, this is the kind of “serious” drama that may mostly leave you irritated and uncomfortable.