The prurient use of butter in Last Tango in Paris resulted in one the most notorious scenes in cinema history. Released amid great controversy in 1972, Last Tango teamed Marlon Brando, 48 at the time of filming, with Maria Schneider, who was 19.
Schneider wasn't informed about the "butter," which would become part of a depiction of anal rape in a movie that focused on a sustained sexual encounter. Schneider later said she felt as if she had been raped by both Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci, who was 30 when he made Last Tango.
That scene and how it impacted Schneider's life is at the core of Being Maria, a sketchy portrait of Schneider's rise to fame and her awakening to what she regarded as an act of exploitation that continued to color how audiences perceived her.
Directed by Jessica Palud, Being Maria stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider. I mentioned age in the early part of this review because the movie's issues of power imbalance -- related to both age and fame -- remain relevant.
Palud smartly recreates the events leading up to Last Tango and shows the movie's filming with Matt Dillon doing a credible Brando, although it's difficult to watch him without being aware of how he captures Brando's intonations and facial expressions. Still, it's a gutsy thing for an actor to attempt and Dillon pulls it off.
As Bertolucci, Guiseppe Maggio conveys the director's manipulative approach. He wanted to capture raw emotion, which is why he didn't tell Schneider that butter would be used in a scene that left her feeling crushed and humiliated.
The story begins when Maria's mother (Marie Gillain) throws Maria out of her house for meeting with her father, actor Daniel Gelin (Yvan Attal). Until that meeting, Gelin had played almost no role in Maria's life. Her volatile mother was furious about her daughter's interest in a father whose last name she didn't even use.
Schneider's career continued after Last Tango, but she became addicted to heroin and never seemed to recover from the storm created by Last Tango. A judgmental portion of the public didn't always separate the fiction of Last Tango from reality, and Schneider suffered as a result.
The movie's last act focuses on Schneider's relationship with Noor (Celeste Brunnquell), a young woman who meets Schneider while doing a dissertation on the actress. The relationship becomes sexual and taxing as Schneider falls into a cycle of drug abuse and rehabilitation.
Though handled a little too didactically, the movie's issues still resonate, but Being Maria slows once the Last Tango filming wraps, perhaps because Schneider's bouts with heroin follow a familiar pattern. Star rises. Star is too young to handle notoriety. Star falls into a self-destructive spiral.
Palud, who worked with Bertolucci, and Vartolomei capture the sometimes impassive way a tumultuous life seems to be happening to Schneider, as she slowly learns to assert herself.
Being Maria may best be viewed as a semi-biopic. The film concludes in 1980 with Schneider doing publicity for Jacques Rivette's Merry-Go-Round. Schneider never quite faded into a washed-up world. She was praised for her work in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975) and appeared in a variety of other movies until 2008. She died of breast cancer in 2011 at the age of 58.
Mostly, though, Schneider remains known for Last Tango, which makes for the most intriguing part of Being Maria, a film that can't help but lose steam when it's most intriguing chapter passes, leaving only bad vibes in its wake.
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