Besides the prefix and suffix of its title, this shares with Beloved the spectacle of Thandie Newton peeing on her own feet, puking, and behaving generally as if possessed by Linda Blair. Her character is that of a refugee from an African dictatorship, now a maid in Italy. Her master, a tortured British pianist played by David Thewlis, continues to make life oppressive for her by showering her with flowers, family jewels, and declarations of love, despite having never had a conversation longer than a dozen words with her. Director Bernardo Bertolucci, turning the clock back to the Sixties, stirs the pot with jump cuts and a jittery camera. Thandie, David, and Bernardo all settle down after a while, and testy annoyance eases into mild boredom. The photography, when the camera holds sufficiently steady, is of coffee-table caliber, and the storyline eventually backs up the pianist's declarations of love with some pretty persuasive evidence of it. At barely ninety minutes, the movie still feels like a stretched-out short story. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd