Go-Go-Golino

SPOTLIGHT

Geography is destiny. In her native Italy, where Valeria Golino made nine movies, she often displayed all of her native charm. she was not, as a result, interested in the urgent American offer to star with someone named Pee-wee Herman in a PG-rated film improbably titled Big Top Pee-wee. "But Pee-wee is very determined," she recalls. "He sent me a tape of his first movie. And I thought, O.K., spend two months in the States and make your American movie, then go back to Italy and be a dramatic actress." It was not to be. The mildest of make-outs with Pee-wee Herman led to the role of Tom Cruise's girlfriend in Rain Man, a wet kiss in a Vegas elevator with the virginal Dustin Hoffman, and a "provisional home" in Los Angeles—"I mean, I don't drive, but I have a car." Now, for one film, Golino's gone home. In Torrents of Spring, shot in Rome and Venice, she's made "a European film, but in English, about the lover whom Timothy Hutton betrays with Nastassja Kinski." She denies reports that the location and the casting inspired a co/po di fulmine: "I've heard how Timothy and I are involved, but it's not true." She also denies that the film is completely European. "What is true is that I'm fully clothed in this love story," she says. "Unfortunately."

JESSE KORNBLUTH