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Poster for Luna
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Luna

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Run Time: 142 min. Format: 35mm Rating: R Release Year: 1979

Starring: Jill Clayburgh, Matthew Barry, Veronica Lazar

The Deuce does Mother’s Day this May with gusto when Bernardo Bertolucci’s gutsy virtuoso melodrama LUNA lights up the darkness of our lives – just as it once lit up the dank environs of 42nd street’s Apollo Theater – after opening the 17th New York Film Festival on September 28, 1979!

Recently widowed opera super-diva ditches Brooklyn for Italy with teen-aged son in tow – only to discover that her semi-self-absorbed “life-style” has led him to a semi-hidden heroin addiction… and she will do all a mother can to bring him back to her bosom! SoufflĂ©’s and disco-dancin! Skateboarding and Un Ballo in Maschera! A fever-dream of Freudian tom-foolery and outrĂ© Oedipal desires!

Slyly self-referential to Bertolucci’s own previous work and rife with rampant shifts in tone – at turns hilarious and horrifying – as tear-jerking as it is squirm-inducing – deliriously surreal and painfully real… a tour-de-force of music, mystery, and a mother-lode of emotion – exploding with light and color from Vittorio Storaro’s lens… an operatic feast for all the senses!

With a near career-killer of a role for Jill Clayburgh in possibly her best performance ever… LUNA is a much maligned but masterful film from one of the Masters of Cinema… and on The Deuce!! Bring your mom if you have one!

Trailer