The Last Emperor

Written by Mark People and Bernardo Bertolucci

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci At the USA/Charles

THE CAMERA pans across a ballroom filled with decadent partygoers. Strains of a Viennese waltz can be heard in the background. The waltz becomes diabolical as the camera zooms into actress Joan Chen's face. A tear rolls down her marble-white cheek. She picks up a lily and starts chewing. slowly and sensually.

No, this is not an outtake from one of Calvin Klein's erotic "Obsession" commercials or a Duran Duran video. This luscious footage comes direct from Bernardo Bertolucci's latest film, The Last Emperor.

Best remebered for Last Tango in Paris, Italian director Bertolucci makes a triumphant return to the screen, this time chronicling the life of China's last emperor, Pu Yi (John Lone). Starting from the emperor's ascension to the throne at the age of three, Bertolucci covers nearly 60 years of Pu Yi's life in a three-hour extravaganza.

The life of Pu Yi reads like something from "Poor Little Rich Girl." At the age of three, Pu Yi has servants, tutors, and advisers to help him rule the kingdom. Rule, however, is one thing that Pu Yi is not allowed to do. After four short years on the throne, a revolution he does not even witness from inside his palace forces Pu Yi to abdicate.

Pu Yi continues to live the life of an emperor without really being one, maintaining the luxuriant standards of his former lifestyle. But alas, the poor youth is lonely. Not allowed to go beyond the gates of the Forbidden City, he has to satisfy his curiosity through books and magazines.

Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro do well with the movie's scenes of debauchery and debasement. A master of capturing erotica, Bertolucci takes advantage of Pu Yi's early imperial splendor and later playboy lifestyle in Tienstin to give cinema some of the most sensual images since Bertolucci's own Tango. Bertolucci and Storaro follow the emperor and empress (Chen) as rich and powerful friends seduce them. While the emperor continues to foster megalomanic visions of regaining the throne, his wife takes to opium.

A displaced person nearly his entire life, manipulated by palace eunuchs, by the Japanese (while he is the puppet emperor of Manchuria) and finally by the Communists--Pu Yi never gets a fair chance at the throne. His life represents 60 years of Chinese political subjugation. An anti-hero at best, Lone's Pu Yi wins over the audience's sympathies. Every time there is even a glimmer of hope in his life a door literally shuts on him.

The beautiful Chen gives a moving performances as Pu Yi's vulnerable, opium-addicted wife. Peter O'Toole, in a cameo as Pu Yi's English tutor, is like most of the rest of the cast in that he more or less just adds to the scenery. This film really belongs to Bertolucci. Though Lone and Chen have some wonderful scenes, particularly at the end of the film, the most stunning aspect of the film is the cinematography. Bertolucci has once again proven that he is the reigning emperor of cinema spectacle.