pleasures

The tale moves from the loneliness of a young girl’s grief into her pleasures provided by memories and the embrace of a chair that continues to hold her as she grows.

A romantic cave sequence splits the difference between mythic mystery and more immediate pleasures, a complex moment that the Roberto Rossellini of “Voyage to Italy” would have been proud to sign.

Married to Stanley, a man of carnal appetites and vulgar manners, Stella has embraced the crude pleasures of realism, while her freeloading sister still clings to tattered aristocratic illusions.

She seemed determined to strip her fame of all artifice while still claiming its pleasures.

To see such heavyweights performing together is one of the documentary’s greatest pleasures.