Taglines: Touched by Genius. Cursed by Madness. Blinded by Love.
Besieged movie storyline. When an African dictator jails her husband, Shandurai goes into exile in Italy, studying medicine and keeping house for Mr. Kinsky, an eccentric English pianist and composer. She lives in one room of his Roman palazzo.
He besieges her with flowers, gifts, and music, declaring passionately that he loves her, would go to Africa with her, would do anything for her. “What do you know of Africa?,” she asks, then, in anguish, shouts, “Get my husband out of jail!” The rest of the film plays out the implications of this scene and leaves Shandurai with a choice.
Besieged (Italian title: L’assedio) is a 1998 film by Bernardo Bertolucci starring Thandie Newton, David Thewlis, Claudio Santamaria, John C. Ojwang, Massimo De Rossi, Veronica Lazar, Gian Franco Mazzoni, Natalia Mignosa and Elena Perino. The film is based on the short story “The Siege” by James Lasdun.
About the Story
The film opens in an unnamed African town where Shandurai (Thandie Newton) watches with distress as a school teacher is taken away by police. In Rome, Shandurai is now a housemaid for Jason Kinsky (David Thewlis), an eccentric English pianist and composer, and is also a promising medical student. Kinsky is in love with Shandurai, sending gifts down to her room via the dumbwaiter. One gift is a ring, which leads to an impassioned marriage proposal, which she rejects. Asked how he could make her love him, she shouts, “Get my husband out of jail!” Only then does Kinsky realize that Shandurai is married.
Shandurai notices a tapestry and some figurines she had dusted are now missing. Later, Kinsky begins composing using Shandurai, vacuuming nearby, as his muse. Hearing his piano riffs, she begins to fall in love herself. Kinsky bargains with an African priest over an undisclosed transaction. Coming home from the school, Shandurai looks up to see Kinsky’s piano being lowered into a truck; he has sold it.
From a letter, she discovers that Kinsky has raised the money to secure her husband’s release. He is coming to Rome. The night before his arrival, Shandurai unbuttons the sleeping Kinsky’s shirt and curls up with him in bed. Morning arrives with her husband ringing the doorbell below. Shandurai at first doesn’t react. Then she gets up, and the film ends with her husband still waiting by the door.
About the Production
Clare Peploe first suggested adapting James Lasdun’s short story “The Siege”, which first appeared in the author’s 1985 book The Silver Age (published in the United States as Delirium Eclipse and Other Stories). Bertolucci conceived the project as a one-hour television movie, but expanded it for theatrical release after seeing the rushes projected on a large screen.
It nonetheless remained a low-budget film with a small crew and a brisk shooting schedule of 20-25 scenes each day, roughly four times the director’s usual pace. By Peploe’s and Bertolucci’s own account, the project, Bertolucci’s first love story, was a particularly apt one for them as a married couple. Peploe served as both screenwriter and, informally, as co-director.
The short story differed from the screen play in three significant ways: it was set in London, not Rome; the woman came from Latin America, not Africa; and Kinsky was depicted as fat and much older than he was in the film. Peploe added a character, Shandurai’s friend Agostino, as a way to contrast Shandurai’s sociability with Kinsky’s social awkwardness.
In structuring the story, Bertolucci was intent on minimizing the exposition, leaving it to the audience to piece together the relationships between characters. Thewlis too had to guess about his character’s origins and motiviations: Kinsky’s character was conceived as an “enigma” with no backstory, other than that he had inherited his villa from an aunt.
Most of the action was filmed and set[3] at 8 vicolo del Borttino in Rome. The villa, despite its location in the wealthy neighborhood of the Spanish Steps, had been abandoned, its owner diseased, her heirs neglecting it. As Bertolucci and Peploe first encountered it, the villa was as depicted at the end of the film, a largely unfurnished home with bare walls and an overgrown garden.
But the home met the director’s criteria for a spiral staircase, and Bertolucci liked the exterior for its two contrasting facades, one overlooking a narrow street leading to a subway station, the other adjacent to the Spanish Steps. The street scenes in both locations were filmed with a hidden camera, allowing the actors to interact with passersby. Throughout the film, a hand-held camera was used for about half the shots.
The African sequences that open the film and appear occasionally thereafter were shot last, over four days in Naivasha, Kenya, with an aerial shot of Lake Turkana, although no specific African country was identified or implied. After viewing the African footage, Bertolucci re-cut the first half-hour of the adjoining sequences set in Rome.
Besieged (1999)
Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Thandie Newton, David Thewlis, Claudio Santamaria, John C. Ojwang, Massimo De Rossi, Veronica Lazar, Gian Franco Mazzoni, Natalia Mignosa, Elena Perino
Screenplay by: Clare Peploe, Bernardo Bertolucci
Production Design by: Gianni Silvestri
Cinematography by: Fabio Cianchetti
Film Editing by: Jacopo Quadri
Costume Design by: Metka Kosak
Set Decoration by: Cynthia Sleiter
Art Direction by: Cynthia Sleiter
Music by: Alessio Vlad
MPAA Rating: R for brief sexuality.
Distributed by: Fine Line Features
Release Date: May 21, 1999
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