But, oh, the prose! More provocative than ten tell-alls stacked together, Some of Me is an analyst's treasure trove and a reader's delight. There is something for everyone. Those interested in Rossellini's rise and fall as the Lancome model will find indignant if good-humored fodder--she warns some to skip ahead "if you can't stand boring." But even those of us who wish we didn't know all those supermodels' names will find this section intriguing. Rossellini also provides some intriguing insights into her often bizarre film roles. There are, though, more bravura sections in this memoir. Who knew that Rossellini still communes with her dead parents? The author prints some of their debates verbatim, though she has already warned: "It's a habit of mine to embellish and color events until I lose sight of what really happened." Rossellini also takes on more upsetting memories such as the painful treatment she underwent for scoliosis and the thoughtless questions people ask about her adopted child. At one point, she remarks, "True elegance is for me the manifestation of an independent mind." Some of Me is a truly elegant manifestation.

Product Description
She writes of her mother, Ingrid Bergman: "Second to acting, Mother loved cleaning, which is not to say she loved even that above me. I'm sure she loved me more than cleaning, but what made her happiest was combining the two."

She writes of her father, Roberto Rossellini: "My father was a Jewish mother ... When we were children (there were seven of us) one of our favorite games was throwing ourselves into Daddy's body. Lying on his side, he pretended to be the sow and we were the piglets."

She writes about her famous nude scene in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, and of posing for such world-renowned photographers as Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, and Steven Meisel. About being fired as the face of Lancome because she dared to become forty, and about the two years of scoliosis that blighted her adolescence. She talks -- candidly but discreetly -- about the men in her life: her ex-husband Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and Gary Oldman. And she conducts intimate and extended dialogues with her beloved dead parents.

This book is utterly original, human, and provocative. Like the author herself.

Rosselini writes about her childhood in Italy, with movie icon Ingrid Bergman as a mother, and revolutionary filmmaker Roberto Rossellini as a father. She reluctantly entered acting -- and almost stopped forever when her first film was a flop -- and became a Lancome cosmetics model, only to be fired for her age. She tells of her son's adoption, her battle with scoliosis, her failed marriage to Martin Scorsese, and the background of her vast mixed family.

"Some of Me" is less like an autobiography than snapshots of Rossellini's life. It's non-linear, darting from adulthood to childhood to adolescence with no order. She doesn't explain much about her husbands and lovers, but explains plenty about the wet nurse who cared for her and her twin sister as babies.

Rossellini gives the feeling of being at peace with the world -- she's gotten past her initial heartbreaks and problems. Some strong emotions -- grief at her mother's loss, anger at Lancome's attitude towards her -- seep through. But Rossellini never really bares her deeper emotions or her soul. This book is like having a deep conversation with her: you will hear about her life, but won't be able to really get down and deep.

Despite that, Rosselini has a bright style, full of melancholy and humor. She relates conversations with her now-dead parents, talks about pelting the paparazzi with rocks, and Audrey Hepburn's dirty fingernails. She lets readers see another side of Ingrid Bergman -- a loving neat-freak, who calmly tells her daughter that she's acquainted with the F-word.

"Some of Me" is an apt title -- it gives us part of the picture, and leaves you feeling that parts of it are still hidden. Isabella Rossellini's book is engaging, but somehow feels unsatisfying.


"Is Being Remembered a Kind of Antidote to Death?"   August 20, 2002
Omnibus (San Francisco)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

I don't usually run up and get a book autographed by the author. But person at the luncheon was mesmerizing. I sat there and thought about her mother Ingrid Bergman, her trials and tribulations, her remarkable beauty, her astonishing talent, and her warmth and genuineness. It was a wonderful and heartwarming 2 hours. I think everyone felt they had met a friend. The book? It covers the waterfront, written in crisp, clear, engaging style. Honest, memorable, including her unforgettable encounters with Anna Magnani, Katharine Hepburn, Martin Scorsese (ex-husband), Gary Oldman. Film, modeling, Television, businesswoman, human being. "Is being remembered a kind of antidote to death? Is fame a sor of eternity? A remedy to the sadness of the end? Does having a famous mother, whoisstill seen every day on TV smiling, crying, walking, talkin, maker her death different, less definitive than other deaths?" This book will last!


I want to hang out with Isabella Rossellini   November 28, 2001
Angela Richardson (Windsor, Ontario)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

My mom and I have this barometer of how personable a celebrity seems. If they seem like someone we'd get along with, we say he/she could "live on our street". I liked Isabella so much, she could be my next-door neighbour! (I'm even pretty sure she wouldn't mind that I just called her by her first name!)

I loved this book! It's funny and real, and Ms. Rossellini comes across so charmingly, flaws and all. It's not a linear autobiography--it skips about from her childhood to early adulthood willy-nilly, and doesn't strictly stick to reporting things that happened in her life. She gives a lot of insight into her own personal philosophy that somehow gives the book a much more friendly, conversational tone than the typical memoir. If I had to have a complaint, I'd wish that she were a little more gossipy about her famous husbands/boyfriends, but that's just not her style.


An enjoyable piece of film history   October 14, 2000
C. Leidig (Akron, Ohio United States)
4 out of 7 found this review helpful

This book is an enjoyable read. Isabella Rossellini has a knack for a clever turn of phrase and she guides the reader through a witty recollection of her life. If you're looking for scandal or hot gossip, you're going to be sadly disappointed. Rossellini has chosen to write a breezy look at her complicated, and often controversial, life. She is Ingrid Bergman's daughter; Americans don't know her father. Her mother inspires awe in the hearts of Americans. In the minds of most American audiences, her father is simply the lover who caused Bergman's ruin in the '50s. Rossellini had some idea of her parents' scandalous relationship, but she was sheltered from most of it because she lived in Italy. Any discussion of Rossellini's life must begin with an examination of her parents and their effect upon their daughter. Bergman was an actress first, and a mother second. She valued her career more than her life as a mother. Rossellini does not portray her mother as a monster, or a lunatic who brandishes wire hangers at every turn. Ingrid Bergman is a complicated woman whose love of film and acting infused her entire life. She loved her children -- and she did not mistreat them -- but her first love was her acting career. As a daughter, Rossellini resented her mother's devoting to her career but she never questioned it. She never questioned her father's relationship with her mother, who was married at the time that she became involved with Roberto Rossellini. A major scandal ensued. Bergman exiled herself in Italy for many years. Upon her return to America in 1958, she won an Academy Award for her performance in Anastasia. Rossellini never explores her mother's feelings about being forced to leave America because of the scandal, nor do we get a full portrait of their marriage. Rossellini was not an attractive man, and it must have been his mind and his artistry that attracted Bergman to him. Writing about Rossellini's mother is unavoidable. Isabella Rossellini is the daughter of a famous actress. Her mother was the repository of the audience's dreams and ambitions. They wanted to be her, look like her, talk like her. It is now Isabella's turn to be that repository of dreams. Isabella Rossellini undertook this role when she became the exclusive model/spokeswoman for Lancome cosmetics. The campaigns were an enormous success, and profit margins for Lancome went up considerably. Rossellini was often known more for her Lancome ads than her film career. Lancome was not a company that prided itself on tact and personal warmth. When the company perceived Rossellini as too old, they tried to force her to resign so that they would not experience a public relations nightmare. Isabella refused to resign and the company terminated her employment. The company obviously underestimated the public, which was outraged that Rossellini had been fired. The company eventually hired Juliette Binoche, who looks suspiciously like Rossellini, for other Lancome ads. Rossellini simply reports these events; she does not make judgments about the people involved. She states the facts as she sees them, which brings up another interesting point about this book. Isabella Rossellini intentionally lies throughout large chunks of this book. She revels in her deceptions, as when she says that she gave birth to two children when she actually adopted her son. She is a natural storyteller and she weaves an interesting portrait of an actress struggling to define her own identity. One such defining moment was the film, Blue Velvet. Rossellini portrayed a brutalized torch singer in David Lynch's bizarro cinematic concoction. In one scene, she emerges from the bushes completely naked, bruised, and beaten. During the filming of this difficult scene, fans lined up with picnic baskets and chairs to watch Rossellini film the scene. Rossellini went to Lynch, and asked him to remove the people from the location, as she did not believe they should watch this difficult scene. David Lynch did nothing. She performed the scene in front of the crowd, and afterward, the audience left. They could not handle the difficult nature of the scene. Lynch's refusal to protect Rossellini's privacy as an actress makes his forays in cinematic misogyny completely

understandable. Rossellini's relationship with Lynch is not understandable. She does not detail the relationship but it is difficult to fathom why an intelligent woman would become involved with such a loony schmuck. Her marriage to Martin Scorsese also does not come under much scrutiny except for an affair with another man that produced her daughter. I wanted to know why she linked herself to men that create films which are so openly hostile. Rossellini does not provide me with that kind of analysis, but what she has provided is a wonderful, light trifle of a read. Immensely readable, it is evidence that Rossellini is more than just her mother's daughter.


Savoir Faire   June 30, 2000
Melissa Hardie (Potts Point, NSW Australia)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Who could resist a book that connects lounging around in bed all day with "spiritual and intellectual wisdom"? Isabella Rossellini's Some of Me is a perfectly wonderful memoir of, well, some of her memories, experiences, interests, and lies. Rossellini assures the reader at the beginning of the book that she lies, and it's a disarming admission which sits interestingly with the candid and transparent prose style she has mastered. Rossellini's memoir details her relationship with her parents, Scorcese, Lynch, and her children, as well as her private passions and interests. For all her discretion, the narrative feels candid, and humorously ironic in a manner that is disarmingly personal because it feels so intimately addressed to the reader.

Rossellini tells of her conversations with "ghosts," a way of tying herself to her past that tweaks the conceit of the lie to provide a quite poignant meditation on loss when it is gracefully and passionately accepted. Her wrangle with Lancome over their decision that she was too old to represent them deals with loss in a more vigorously defiant way, and yet with a certain savoir-faire: Rossellini warns us that this section will be boring, her way of distancing herself from her own disappointment, perhaps, but also something of a lie.

But what's so intriguing about this book is the way in which Rossellini relies on memory's imprecision to move from topic to topic. From a discussion of her mother's advice that to live a happy life one requires "good health and a short memory," Rossellini moves to her forgetfulness, her mother's obsession with cleaning and to her own feelings about various cleaning implements, and then to the manifestation of her philosophy of living provided in the arrangements of objects in her home. These associative and nostalgic rambles are often poignant, and seldom lose a sense of coherence. Rather, they show how artless really excellent and thoughtful prose may seem.

And then there are the pictures: again, an artless miscellany that offers everything from hand-drawn cleaning instruments to objets trouves, art objects given to her by Lynch and others, and a collection of personal snaps as well as fashion photographs. Rossellini loves things for their simplicity, beauty, and richness. If you do too, enjoy this book.