review for Besieged on AllMovie

One of Bertolucci's strangest films, this virtually silent poem of erotic attraction is unbelievable as drama, and too wispy for an allegorical reading. Beseiged centers on the growing erotic obsession of a solitary English composer (David Thewlis), residing in a sumptuous inherited apartment, for his highly educated and astonishingly beautiful African cleaning woman (Thandie Newton). Bertolucci reveals almost nothing about the characters' backgrounds or psychology, telling the story through a subtle, sensual interplay of music and exchanged glances. When the Englishman finally declares his passion, begging to the woman to marry him, she demands that he free her husband, a political revolutionary, from jail. The film spins into what would seem to be a white man's wish-fulfillment fantasy, with mildly racist overtones. It would be difficult to call a film made with such consummate skill softcore porn, but it would be fair to say that it dwells in a no-man's-land between that genre and the realm of the European art film. Bertolucci has often addressed issues of sexual politics, and here he seems to be adding race and colonialism to the mix, but it's difficult to figure out what he is saying about these topics.