Critics were decidedly mixed about this 1996 drama from Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and the movie enjoyed only a brief theatrical release. Nowadays it is best known for the screen debut of Liv Tyler (Lord of the Rings) as a 19-year-old beauty named Lucy Harmon who arrives for a summer vacation at a villa in Tuscany to stay with some old friends of her mothers. She soon meets a variety of jaded artistic types who immediately respond to her inspirational innocence.

Lucy has come to Italy to solve the riddle left in a diary written by her dead mother, who visited this artist's refuge 20 years earlier: who is Lucy's real father? She also has a second ulterior motives for taking the trip--to lose her virginity to Niccolo, an Italian boy with whom she shared a first kiss as a young teenager.

Several other young Italian men find Lucy quite heavenly (she is, after all, Liv Tyler), and she's not immune to their attentions, but until she can locate and seduce Niccolo, she'd rather spend time with a playwright (Jeremy Irons) who is dying of AIDS and therefore has something other than sex on his mind.

For director Bertolucci this is his most intimate film since Last Tango In Paris. Rachel Weisz (The Mummy) is a visual wonder non-chalantly sunbathing nude by the pool, and Tyler turns everyones head when she poses under a tree for the resident artist. It all seems so matter-of-fact and unassumingly natural you have to remind yourself this is Weisz and Tyler before they became international stars! And the answers to her two quests both have satisying plot twists at the end of the film.

If you watch this film for nothing else, soak in the beauty of the setting (well, yes, and Tyler too.) Stealing Beauty creates a serene mood that's so soothing you'll want to book a flight to Tuscany immediately, just to soak up the setting's idyllic atmosphere. If you're in the right frame of mind, this movie is like a balm for the soul, and Tyler and Bertolucci can share the credit for making this two-hour vacation so charmingly relaxing.