Start with the already famous, indeed controversial lips. just say she's got Bette
Davis mouth; she kisses like Gelsey Kirkland; her Cinema-Scope pout could belong to
Soupy Sales after he's been smacked with a cherry pie. Now let's move on. There
must be more to discuss in the burning media matter of Liv Tyler. Can she act ? Does
she possess a screen radiance ? Are her new movies any good ? Quick answers: hard to tell;
could be; and no. 



In Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty, Tyler visits a Tuscan villa where the
regulars rhapsodize over her innocence, her naturalness, her cutiful-beautifulness.
In James Mangold's Heavy, she is a waitress at an upstate New York diner, and the
cow-size chef gets mooncalf eyes at her approach. These movies are all about looking
at Liv. They are votive offerings to a budding star from old connoisseurs and randy
swains. When the camera isn't genuflecting before Tyler, it's copping a feel. 



Could any young actress not wilt in this adoring, predatory glare ? All right, Audrey
Hepburn in Roman Holiday--but that film had an old-Hollywood glow, and Hepburn was
unique. The two Tyler movies are anemic, anomic art-house fodder. One comes from the
director of The Conformist and The Last Emperor; the other from the guy who is about
to make CopLand, the film Sly Stallone hopes will turn him into a certified Actor. 



Bertolucci chose an odd genre, the European house party, whose best examples are
Renoir's The Rules of the Game, set on the eve of World War II, and Bunuel's The
Exterminating Angel, which was about a party that, mysteriously, no one could leave.
This time there's no war, and it's the audience that's trapped. In Susan Minot's goofy
script, Tyler ministers to ailing writer Jeremy Irons and other artsy layabouts while
searching for the man on whom to bestow her virginity. The climactic deflowering scene
provides the only giggles in an otherwise stodgy mess. 



In Heavy, Tyler is the siren who leads a sad-sack cook (Pruitt Taylor Vince) to a full
realization of the sweet misery of life. His bar-diner, which often looks deserted
except for one resident grouse, is the anti-Cheers; it should be called Blahs. Heavy
is a mood piece, which means there's not much going on and ain't ever gonna be. The
characters shop, eat, sleep, do some world-class moping and, in general, wait for
something the hell to happen. And all that happens is Liv. 



In a way, Stealing Beauty and Heavy serve as cunning showcases for the ingenue by
creating a vacuum into which she brings some fresh air. She lacks Alicia Silverstone's
knowing perkiness; Tyler carries the hint of emotional exhaustion in her wide eyes,
as if she had just wiped away tears or sleep. Yet she has the impact on these films
that Murray Kempton said John Lindsay had on the 1965 New York City mayoral campaign:
"He is fresh and everyone else is tired." 



Partly this is because Tyler is virtually the only young person around; everyone else
is tired or bored or dying. But also because she truly is at ease with herself and
the camera. Her allure can seem a come-on, but she's not a flaunter; she doesn't shake
her beauty. And remember, she's only a kid (the credits for Heavy include an
acknowledgment to "Miss Tyler's tutors"). Even now she takes an unselfconscious
delight in the attention paid to her--in the '90s it's called poise. And that will
serve her well if she ever gets into a real movie.