I spent half of last night
casually watching again
"Last Tango in Paris".
Only to be caused with more insomnia
by this mesmerizing painful story...
Paul is a lonely American businessman in Paris,
struggling to make sense of things
after the death of his wife.
Jeanne is a boiling French young woman,
drifting through life,
caught up in a romance with a young filmmaker
whom she doesn't know if she loves.
When they meet in a deserted Paris apartment,
it is lust at first sight.
But the affair which begins there
refuses to obey
to the restraints
they try to place on it.
It is so bizarre to see Marlon Brando
as he was in 1972,
already ageing badly...
...and yet still filled of the vitality
and edginess
that made him one
of all times greatest actors!
Now it is 2016 and
Brando is dead.
So Brando's most
powerful scene
resonates for me
in an unexpected way.
resonates for me
in an unexpected way.
The scene where he
confronts the body of his wife,
who had committed suicide.
He mourns her
in an avalanche of rage and grief.
in an avalanche of rage and grief.
"I may be able to comprehend the universe, but I'll
never understand the truth about you," he says.
He calls her vile names.
Then is taken by sobs.
Then is taken by sobs.
He tries to wipe off her
cosmetic death mask
("Look at you!
You're a monument to your mother! You never wore makeup, never wore false
eyelashes.").
He doesn't understand
why she killed herself...
...why she abandoned him...
...why she never really loved him
in the first place...
...why he was always
more of a guest in her hotel,
more of a guest in her hotel,
than a husband in her bed...
But such a narcissistic
actor as Brando
never held more love
and grief
for anybody else,
and grief
for anybody else,
than for himself.
And
here lays his power!
Here, in perhaps his
best performance ever,
he is sorry for himself.
Yes, at the end he was
fat.
A lot of people get fat.
But what a thing to
happen to Marlon Brando!
How better way to destroy
an actor's vanity?
an actor's vanity?
How more to force us to
admire him
for himself ,
for himself ,
and not because Stanley
Kowalski
looked sexy
in that famous white T-shirt?
looked sexy
in that famous white T-shirt?
Did he eat as he did, out
of self pity?
Or because he felt he
deserved to?
Or because he felt deprived?
The great director Bertolucci is at play in this film.
The long, slow movements
build dazzling images.
He works almost entirely in shades of brown,
bringing out the textures
of wood and flesh...
He makes the lovers seem
like part of the furniture,
in those dusty rooms
with a history of their own.
He focuses on surfaces
- bare skin, bare floors, the slow-flowing Seine .
When in fact he hints at what runs deeper...
The tango scene is so gorgeously artificial.
The dancers
turn their heads in odd angles.
Paul advises Jeanne to watch their legs.
The two attempt to keep everything formal,
but there's no sense in it,
without that boiling passion.
Last Tango In Paris is a big, slow film.
Many viewers will find it too slow.
Paul's cynicism
can become frustrating to watch.
Just as can Jeanne's furious attempts
to redefine the world to suit her needs.
But the sheer visual beauty of Bertolucci's work
keeps the viewer hooked.
Few serious films
challenged actors
to explore the human dimensions of sex.
Isn't it stunning that
no film, since 1972,
has been more sexually intimate,
more revealing, honest and
transgressive
than "Last Tango in Paris"?
When the two meet,
Paul forces sex upon her.
It would be rape,
but Jeanne does not object or resist,
makes her
body available
almost with detachment.
It is rape in Paul's
mind,
Paul's sexual release seems real,
here and throughout the film.
But we are never sure
what Jeanne feels
during their sex.
Paul insists on "no
names,"
no personal histories.
Their meetings in the
apartment are not dates,
but occasions for sex,
which he defines,
and
she accepts.
The pair of the 20-year
old girl,
and the floppy 50-year-old man
seems unlikely.
But Bertolucci enriches
it
with extraordinary dialogue.
Brando and Schneider
seem natural and spontaneous.
Their conversations are rare
as they do not point to a purpose
or conclusion.
These are
the sorts of
things
these people might really say.
And it's fabulous how relaxed,
how playful
and sweet
Paul can be with her.
Schneider plays much of the film
completely nude.
She is held in closeup
during long scenes,
when at 22 she had hardly acted before.
But she shares the film
with Brando
and meets him in the middle.
What Hollywood actress
of the time
could have played Brando
on his own field?
Paul does not objectify
her.
And neither does the movie.
He keeps his secrets,
he refuses intimacy,
he
treats her roughly.
But all this is explained
by the scene with the body of his
wife,
and perhaps by his own experience of sex.
Some viewers will see
this film
because of its legendary sex scenes.
Unfortunately,
the
chances are
that they'll be disappointed.
As they contain more
implication,
than direct action....
...And it is really quite soft
by today's standards.
In a film on two
characters remaining strangers,
Bertolucci and his
actors
achieve a kind of intimacy
other movies rarely approached.
It's not so much about
sex,
as about the behaviour
that surrounds it.
About the sense of obligation
to
make small talk,
the awkward silences,
the shared fantasies
and childish games
far from the real world...
But these are the
intimacies
which tie people to one another.
This is the spell
which
Paul and Jeanne
both become desperate to break ...
...as we watch them dance
toward
destruction.
The film is not perfect.
The character of Tom is
a caricature .
Jean-Pierre Leaud behaves
not
as if he is a movie director,
but as if he's playing one.
The dialogue between Tom
and Jeanne
seems unnatural and forced.
We don't believe it, and
we don't care.
What happens in the
apartment
between Paul and Jeanne
is what the movie is about.
It is about how sex
fulfills
two completely different
needs.
Paul needs
to lose himself
in mourning
and in anger.
He needs
to force his
manhood
on this stranger
because he failed with his wife.
Jeanne responds
to a man
who,
despite his apparent detachment,
is focused on her.
Who desperately needs
her .
He is the opposite of Tom,
who says he wants
to film every moment of her life,
but is thinking of his
film,
not of her.
Jeanne senses that Paul
needs her
as she may never
be needed again
in all her life...
Her despair at the end
is not because of lost romance,
but because
Paul no
longer seems to need her.
Then there is the
closing sequence,
in which Paul
abandons the behavior of the empty room.
He reveals his name,
tells her about his life,
seems to desire her
in the banal way a middle-age man
desires a young woman.
That changes everything.
Is it plausible,
what
she does to him
when he follows her
into her mother's apartment?
I don't know.
But I know
the movie
could not end
with both of them alive.
Much has been said
about
Brando's death scene
in "The Godfather" ...
...But what other actor
would have thought
to park his chewing gum,
before
the most important
moment of his life?
By Giulia Ghica Dobre
