Stealing Beauty's correlations with the later The Dreamers — a ripe lead with bee - stung lips; a moment in which the 19 - year - old protagonist nestles a paramour's photograph against an
erogenous zone (a gesture Jonathan Rosenbaum called in his review of The Dreamers «the perfect encapsulation of Bertolucci's idea of a turn - on»); scatological punchlines; an unlikely virgin; shock nudity — are numerous and sundry,
so much
so that one would like to call the newer film an apologia.