Cinema By Donna Chernin

Young unknown plays heavy role in 'Luna'

What kind of parents would encourage their adolescent son to begin an incestuous relationship, shoot heroin and have a homosexual encounter with an older man?

Perhaps if these experiences were part of a Bernardo Bertolucci film, then the parents' decision might make some sense.

In “Luna,” Matthew Barry plays 15-year-old Joe who accompanies his mother, a newly widowed opera singer (Jill Clayburgh) to Italy to fulfill her summer singing engagements.

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There they start an incestuous relationship before backing off abruptly, and Joe becomes addicted to heroin.

It's an obviously heavy role, one that first caused the 17-year-old Matthew more concern than his parents felt. His father is P.J. Barry, an actor, playwright and director, and his mother is a social worker.

"My parents weren't worried at all, but I was. I guess that's because I had seen Bertolucci's 'Last Tango in Paris'," the young actor explained during a recent press interview in New York.

Matthew, who had previously performed in several off-Broadway plays and in a television situationcomedy series called "Ivan the Terrible," saw an ad in the Variety newspaper announcing auditions for the role of Joe in “Luna.”

"Bertolucci was looking for an unknown for the part," Matthew recalled. When I went to the auditions, they first said I was too young, but then Clare Peploe, Bertolucci's wife (who co-wrote the screenplay), found my picture in a discarded pile and she showed it to her husband. Bertolucci liked the photograph, and we met and talked for a half hour. Then I was called back for a screen test with Jill Clayburgh. It was narrowed down to four actors before I was called and told that I was the lucky one."

Bertolucci made a wise choice. With his dark hair and soulful brown eyes, Matthew has a sensitive, brooding appearance. For someone so young, he brings sur-

'Here's what is going to happen, and I followed directions."

Actually, Matthew seems quite mature for his age, and he is a thoughtful and articulate fellow. When not performing, he attends Professional Children's School with other actors, dancers and skaters. in New York City. "This is a type of school where you are allowed time off for work, such as making film,” he explained.

Although Matthew would like to star in more movies, he does not seem overly concerned if his film career flounders or runs into a snag.

"I am still optimistic that I could become a baseball player, although I'm undecided about whether to be a pitcher, catcher or shortstop.

"I would also love to study broadcasting or journalism one day, because I have always been a good writer. Do you know that I actually wrote some parts of my role in 'Luna'? I thought up the scene where I sit in the Italian ruins and New York Yankees, and I devised talk to the young boy about the the part where I play the drums with the silverware. Also, I improvised the dancing I do by myself in the cafe before the older homosexual man approaches me," Matthew said proudly.

Bertolucci cut that particular scene so abruptly that the audience is left wondering if anything sexual transpired between the character of Joe and the older man.

"That part of the film is one of the only things that I'm a little upset about. The way we first shot it, after the man tries to slow dance with me, I say that I'm tired and go over to a table and lie down. That part was cut, so that you just see me dancing with the man. Bertolucci's wife didn't like the fact that it was cut either.

"As far as I'm concerned, I didn't have sex with the older man. But as far as the film is concerned, I'm not sure what Bertolucci intended. I just don't know.”

Matthew has a younger 13-yearold brother and an eight-year-old sister. "My brother saw the film and thought that I was good. My

prising depth to the strenuous role sister said that if she had a son

of the tormented adolescent. It is an impressive film debut.

Naturally, discussion centered on how Matthew prepared for the scenes in which the viewer graph ically sees Joe shooting heroin and for the two sexual encounters with. his mother.

“As for the drug scenes, I origi sally didn't know much about shooting up. I asked everybody around the set what they we We pooled our ideas and ju it.

*At about

Clayburt

I was

tried

like Joe, she'd probably shoot him."

Matthew's parents have beenseparated for about six years, and he lives with his mother, brother and sister in a duplex in Westbeth, an artists' complex in Greenwich Village West.

"I live on the top floor and come downstai stairs to eat to my family

and answer lives nearby regularly. My “involved in the

17, started

WRS 17,

My

ped up a good six months later, Matthew grew five inches.

"Since the last scenes of the movie had been filmed first and the first scenes last, Bertolucci needed a tall actor to play my father Douglas in the opening scene to make me appear shorter. He picked Fred Gwynne.'

""

Reporters in the group were curious as to why Joe gets slapped at the end of the film by the man who he discovers in Italy is his real father.

"He slapped me because I had lied to him and told him that his son was dead. It was also a slap of love. When we were shooting that

scene, I was going through an emotional part of my life, shooting a film in a strange new place in a foreign country.

Matthew is no longer concerned that he might be typecast and only fered drug addict roles. "I was worried about that for a while, but I'm trying hard to avoid it. A tentative new project is a new Coppola film in the works called "The Escape Artist' in which I would play a young magician.”

Perhaps the surest way for Matthew to safeguard against being typecast in the future is to next accept a part in a Walt Disney film.

Seventeen-year-old Matthew Barry makes his film debut in “Luna” as the troubled adolescent accompanies mother on a trip to Rome.

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