THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
In 1972, Maria Schneider was only 19 years old when Bernardo Bertolucci offered her the leading role in Last Tango in Paris, a sumptuous face-to-face encounter crossed by a sick romanticism, a war of the sexes and generations: Adam and Eve settle their scores, against the backdrop of an empty and sepulchral Paris, post-68. The young woman plays opposite a sacred monster, Marlon Brando, 48 years old. It is one scene in particular that will change his life: Brando throws himself on the young woman and sodomizes her using butter as lubricant. Although the sexual assault is feigned, the actress will feel humiliated, even “a little violated” of never having been kept informed of the scene, unwittingly instigated by the actor and the filmmaker.
Elevated to the rank of sex symbol, Maria Schneider is only offered roles similar to that of the Last Tango, onlookers and journalists constantly remind him of the famous scene of the lump of butter. It’s the eternal story of young actresses who dared to strip on screen, without properly calculating the crass misogyny that awaited them outside. After a checkered career and addiction problems, the actress died of cancer in 2011, at the age of 58. Since then, her uneven trajectory has become the emblem of all the flaws of a film industry giving a blank check to its beloved authors, with little regard for the way they treated their actresses. Also a symbol of an era, the 1970s, now disavowed, which, under the cover of liberalization of morals, failed to see its share of abuse and blindness.
Maria adapts the book that Vanessa Schneider, journalist at Worlddedicated to his cousin (Your name was Maria Schneider, Grasset, 2018). Riveted to the intimate, Jessica Palud only takes, from an entire life, the moments of misfortune and the sad shifts, quickly transforming the biopic into a strange exercise in martyrology: a toxic mother, an absent father, the actor Daniel Gélin , which resurfaces in his life and inducts him into the world of cinema. Bertolucci’s indifference, drugs – in extremis, a sunny romance with a student.
Strange paradox
The film is entirely structured around the shooting of Last Tango in Paris. This is what the spectator expects, this is what he came to see, whether he knows Bertolucci’s film or not. What does this flatly reconstructed sequence tell us? What does it stir up in us? Not much, as the fact of condemning the passivity of the film crew, who abandoned Schneider to his fate, only serves to reassure us in our virtue as enlightened spectators.
You have 28.37% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.