Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango In Paris” is this weeks’ special in film cafe ‘t Hoogt in Utrecht. Its lead actor Marlon Brando (1924-2004) is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time. So there was no way I was gonna miss this one. Going to the theatre for a classic movie beats watching a DVD at home anytime.
Since I welcome contributions to this blog by others, I asked my good friend Robbert to write a review about Last Tango in Paris. So here goes ….
It was Monday afternoon when I got Martin’s e-mail asking me to join him on a movie trip showing “Last Tango in Paris”. Me, totally oblivious of what to expect of Marlon Brando in his all time high movie years, accepted the invitation. The movie, made in the year 1972 (approximately 1 year after I learned not to wet myself … being 2 years old 
), had caused quite some disturbance mostly due to the “explicit“ scenes it contains. Being two very healthy guys we would force ourselves to check what explicit meant in the early seventies.
The story of Last Tango in Paris is about Paul (Marlon Brando), a man in his mid forties, who’s going through a personal crisis just having lost his wife by suicide. He’s chasing an advertisement for a rental apartment far away from his every day life. That same moment, a twenty year old girl Jeanne (Maria Schneider, 1952-) who has just been engaged, is chasing the same advertisement for her big start in life. When both meet in the apartment their worlds clash.
He, down, depressed and full of anger and disbelieve about his wife’s death, finds himself being lost and disattached not only from himself but from everything around him. She, just at the start of her life being pleased having a starting film director boyfriend for a fiancé and about to be married. They start a passionate relationship with the main rule not to mention anything about themselves. No names, no personal information what so ever.
They take the apartment in which acts of dominance (he doesn’t care) and submission (she does) come together. In this act you see many scenes in which she is totally attracted to this mystery man with his dominance and total lack of attachment towards her. He sees in here another life, away from his past and a chance for a better future. The story ends when the moment arrives he lets go of his self-inflicted sorrow and pain and lets her know that he’s just the average guy around the corner. Being 45 years old, owning a little hotel and being a recent widower. She realizes that this isn’t the life she expects and after a last tango in Paris he follows her persistently back to her mothers apartment. She realizes this man would never let her go and within a last enforced embrace she shoots and kills him.
After a 2h 16m film I must say that I could understand a little bit that the movie was quite controversial in its days. For me the scene in which Brando sits beside his death wives bed and begins to totally and utterly curse her is one to remember.
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