abelardo64 A childhood memory, looking into his mother's face with a full moon creating a halo around her. Beautiful and so Italian. The mother in this case is Jill Claybourgh, she was raiding the crest of the wave then and it's very telling that she would choose to play a part that required, not just appearing completely nude but making love to her teen age junkie of a son. She is awkwardly terrific. Her face is a voyage in itself. I would have use quite a different wardrobe for her character as well as make up and hair style but maybe that was just a sign of its day. Jill laughs saying "I am crazy" and that would explain some of the dangerous nuttiness she indulges in here. Her son, played beautifully, by unknown - before and since - Matthew Barry. A Bertoluccian teen sex object if I ever so one. The film has oodles of moments to cherish. Tomas Milian plays the boy's real father. They've never met, His father still lives in a rather intense relationship with his mother, the stunning Alida Valli. In small, very small parts, Carlo Verdone, Roberto Benigni and Renato Salvatori. A film to enjoy with your heart, your gut and your libido but not your brain. Just live your brain for other Bertolucci jewels.

holsu Bernardo Bertolucci have a fantastic way of making movies. His stories are usually a bit weird but altogether very interesting. This time the story doesn't please me that much.La Luna is a story about the relationship between an opera singer (Jill Clayburgh) and her son (Matthew Barry). The movie is as beautifully filmed as Bertolucci's movies always are but the weird incestical feeling about it does not appeal to me. I just can't find any reason for it. I also think that the heroin addiction is not portrayed very believably.Plus points for the strong European feeling in the movie.

parkerr86302 Luna has never been on video or DVD in America, and seems to have vanished after its theatrical release. Too bad, I would like to see it again, even though my memories of it aren't very favorable. A point should be clarified, although it is a spoiler. The film is about incestuous attraction---no genuine act of incest actually occurs. When Jill Clayburgh finally tries to get her son into bed, he rejects her and slaps her around. That ends that. If some of the other viewers here were unnerved by the depiction of incestuous desire, how would they have felt if the act had actually occurred??? The film was also disappointing to have the kid be an obnoxious heroin junkie--that works against the film in a big way. Perhaps the film will yet resurface someday, and we can evaluate it again.

howie73 Not many discuss Bertolucci's La Luna as one of his most challenging films but I beg to differ. In 1979 I presume the film's campy allure had not been registered but today it's all to be seen; call it kitsch or ironic, but la Luna encapsulates two worlds Bertolucci tried to negotiate in most of his films - the world of appearances and surfaces against the inner world of the protagonist. La Luna plays both against each other as a masquerade, because what we think we are getting is not what we really are seeing. Bertolucci presents the first part as a post-Freudian fable in late 70s Rome where an Opera singer and her son indulge in an Oedipal relationship. Bertolucci then introduces the lost but real father to the scene as if to eradicate Freudian psychoanalysis as a spurious retelling of Greek myth. It seems the son only wants his father's recognition and love, while the mother is marginalized. It's a very masculine thesis for Bertolucci, one that reinforces the illusory fundamentals of Patriarchy, while negating the matriarchal as a mere bypass to the final journey(father's love).Jill Clayburgh's acting is off-key most of the time but this unwittingly invests the film with its latter-day camp quality, while Matthew Barry looks dazed and confused throughout the entire film. Rome is undoubtedly the best part of the film as well as the sumptuous visuals that capture its sun-drenched beauty and decaying but grand monuments.