Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Starring: Marlon Brando
Grade: A

Very rarely do I feel the need to acknowledge the power of the opening credits, but Bernardo Bertolucci’s use of the eye-catching paintings of Double Portrait of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach and Study for a Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne was such a cool, tone-setting way to start out the film.

Summary

In Paris, France, a depressed Paul (Brando) yells as a loud subway train passes by above him. Jeanne (Maria Schneider) walks by him, looks at him, and keeps going. Next, Jeanne comes out of a building with an apartment up for grabs. She goes to a nearby bar to use a phone. Inside the booth, Paul is using the phone, and she goes in right after him. She recognizes him from earlier but doesn’t say anything. Jeanne calls her mother to tell her she’s found an apartment in Passy and she’s going to check it out. After that, she has to go to the train station to pick up her fiancé Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud). Following this, Jeanne appears at the apartment complex and speaks to the female concierge (Darling Légitimus) at the front desk to see the available apartment. The concierge didn’t know about it, so she asks if Jeanne is going to rent it. Jeanne doesn’t know yet because she hasn’t seen it, so the concierge gives her a hard time because this happens to her a lot. Then, the concierge tells Jeanne she can go up by herself because she’s afraid of spiders. However, when she reaches for the key, it isn’t there. Just then, they are interrupted by an unknown man who leaves an empty bottle outside of his door. The concierge says “they” drink 6 bottles a day before she breaks out into song for some reason. Jeanne goes to leave (because why wouldn’t you at this point), but the concierge stops her because she knows there’s a duplicate somewhere. She finds it and gives it to Jeanne, though she doesn’t let go of it right away. She comments on how young Jeanne looks and starts laughing like a maniac to the point where Jeanne has to forcefully take it from her.

Jeanne enters the dark apartment and opens the blinds, turning to see Paul sitting against the wall. Frightened, she asks what he’s doing there and how he got in. When he simply states that he entered through the door, she realizes she left it open. He was already there beforehand though, so Jeanne correctly deduces that he was the one who had the first key. She says she had to bribe the concierge for her key, but that’s not really what happened. Anyway, she compliments the old apartment and talks about how an armchair by the fireplace would look good and how it should be placed in front of the window. Changing the subject, she notes Paul’s American accent and asks if he’s American. He doesn’t answer. He just walks into the next dark room. Jeanne follows and opens all the windows as he keeps sauntering. She asks if he’s talking the apartment, but Paul responds by asking her the same thing. She isn’t sure. Paul sits down and starts messing with stuff like a mini lamp shade, so Jeanne heads to the bathroom. Upon exiting that room, the phone rings. She asks Paul if she should answer it or not, but he doesn’t respond, so she does. As soon as she starts talking, Paul picks up the other line and says there is no one there. He hangs the phone on something and walks to over to Jeanne in the other room. She hangs up the phone once he enters. She assumes Paul is taking the room, but he’s not so sure now and asks if she likes it. She’s not really sure either, so he tells her to think fast. He goes to leave, and the door is heard closing shut. Jeanne picks up her hat from the ground and is startled to see that Paul didn’t actually leave. He turns around, walks over to her, picks her up, and takes her over by the window where they start making out and then aggressively have sex on the spot. They roll off each other and onto the ground afterwards. Next, the two exit the apartment in silence and Paul rips the sign off the building about the vacant apartment. A word isn’t said between them once they leave. They just go their separate ways. Jeanne runs to the train station to greet Tom upon his arrival. She’s confused however because there is a film crew around them filming when they kiss and such, but Tom reveals that it’s for his new project.

He’s a filmmaker and is documenting everything Jeanne does because it stars her. It’s called Portrait of a Girl, and it’s already been accepted for television. Naturally, Jeanne is mad because he didn’t even ask her for permission, but he couldn’t miss the opportunity to get shots of her meeting him at the train station. She calls him a traitor for kissing her when he knew the cameras were rolling, but he calms her down by telling her it’s a love story.

He changes the subject to asks what she did while he was away, and Jeane lies, saying she thought of him day and night and cried over it. Once she comments that she can’t live without him, he tells everyone to cut there because it was so perfect. She still seems angry, but they start kissing right after. Now, Paul also owns a hotel, so he goes to it to check on things. There, a maid named Catherine (Catherine Allégret) updates Paul on the aftermath of his wife Rosa’s (Veronica Lazăr) death since she recently committed suicide. As Catherine cleans up blood, she talks about how she would have been finished already, but the police wouldn’t let her touch anything because they didn’t believe Rosa’s death was a suicide. They had Catherine take Rosa’s place in a reconstruction of the events too, despite all the guests at the hotel being awake and the place crawling with cops. She was also questioned on whether Rosa was sad, happy, if her and Paul fought, how long they were married, and why they didn’t have any children. The cops told her that Paul is an unstable boss, and how he was a boxer, and it didn’t work out. Paul still stares at the window at a couple of neighbors and barely pays attention, as Catherine continues with the cops’ comments on Paul’s life with how he became an actor, a bongo player, a revolutionary in South America, and a journalist in Japan. One day, he apparently landed in Tahiti, learned French, and then came to Paris. He met a woman with money, married her, and hasn’t done anything since. Catherine tries to change the subject to going back to cleaning, but she talks about how the police refused this. Finally, Paul tells her to stop running the tap water, and she tells him they’ll be doing the autopsy right about now. She hasn’t turned off the water yet, so Paul asks her why. She ignores it and gives him back his razor because they don’t need it anymore for the investigation. He examines it and says it isn’t his. He grabs her, moves her out of the way, turns off the water, and leaves in a haste. Catherine turns the water back on for whatever reason.

Jeanne goes back to the apartment and finds a stray cat. She scares it away by making a bunch of weird noises, only to be interrupted by a moving man who wants to know where he should put a chair. He got in because the door was open. Regardless, the man is extremely impatient and just leaves the chair in the center of the room. She takes it and puts it in front of the fireplace. She attempts to leave the room but has to backtrack because the other moving man brings in a few more chairs. Next comes the table and a king size mattress that won’t fit in the bedroom. Paul finally shows up, as he bought all this stuff, and he thanks the movers upon their exit. Paul goes right over to Jeanne who is sitting in the chair, and he tells her that the chair should go in front of the window. With her still sitting on the chair, he drags her to it. Jeanne explains she came to return the key to him, but he doesn’t care about it and just wants her to help him move some furniture around. Once they both see that the bed is too big for the room, Jeanne asks Paul his name, but he refuses to tell her. He doesn’t want to know her name either. He just wants to make this apartment a safe sanctuary where they are free from this sort of thing. Paul goes on about how he doesn’t want to know anything about her, where she lives, where she comes from, or whatever else. On his insistence, they are going to meet there in this apartment without knowing anything that goes on outside of it. They’re going to forget everything, though he admits he’s not even sure he can. He then asks if she’s scared, but she’s not. Sometime later at the hotel, Paul’s mother-in-law (Maria Michi) is rummaging through stuff. He wasn’t expecting her until later, but she came as soon as she heard the news. They embrace. Of course, there is more bad news. Her husband has asthma, so the doctor wouldn’t let him come. She’s okay though. She’s stronger. She continues to look through things, as she’s on the hunt for a letter or some type of clue as to why Rosa would kill herself, but Paul assures her there is nothing.

She can’t believe Rosa wouldn’t leave anything for her or Paul, but it is what it is. Paul tells her she needs to rest, so he takes her to Room 12. Upon entering the room, she asks for more details and brings up the razor, implying Rosa may have used it to kill herself. Paul reiterates the information he already told her on the phone about what happened. It was in the evening, and he called for an ambulance when he saw her. It happened in one of the rooms at the hotel. She asks if Rosa suffered, but he just tells her to wait for the autopsy results. As he goes into the bathroom to turn off the tap water, she states that she has announcement cards ready and how she will prepare a beautiful room with flowers for Rosa. Paul gives her credit on coming prepared with everything for Rosa’s proceeding memorial, but Paul is adamant that there are to be no priests involved. She is insistent that funerals are to be religious, but Paul flips out and throws her suitcase because Rosa didn’t believe, adding that no one believes in God there and the church doesn’t want any suicides anyway. Rosa’s mother says they’ll give Rosa absolution, and she just wants that and a nice mass for her. She starts to weep because she doesn’t understand why Rosa did it, and Paul punches the door before leaving because he doesn’t know either. Paul walks through the hallway and closes the doors of some tenants. One girl opens the door to look at him once more, and he goes over and slams that shut too. Later, Jeanne goes back to the apartment to see Paul. The bed is now in the living room. They have sex almost as soon as she gets there. Afterwards, they sit right up against each other, and Jeanne talks about how beautiful it is to not know anything about each other. She then wonders if they can make each other cum without touching. They enjoy a laugh when they realize they can’t. Changing the subject, Jeanne wishes to give Paul a name to call him. He’d rather not and instead says he’d rather be referred to as a grunt or groan or something. The two jokingly engage in animal noises together, acting like they are greeting each other with their new names.

Jeanne meets Tom in a courtyard outside of her childhood home. Of course, Tom has his film crew there, and they are recording the noises of the outside. Tom gets a bit annoyed that Jeanne shows up with a new hairdo, but he goes on about how they can turn this into part of the story and visualizes how the shots can look. Jeanne lets him know she’s in a hurry. He wants to talk a little first, but she tells him they will improvise. She goes over to this little cemetery and walks to the tombstone for childhood dog Mustapha, who understood her and used to watch her for hours. Her nanny Olympia (Luce Marquand) chimes in about how dogs are worth more than people and that Mustapha could always tell the poor from the rich. If someone well-dressed came by, he wouldn’t do anything, but he would cause a stir when someone who looked poor would appear. She adds that “the colonel trained him to recognize Arabs by their scent”, with the colonel being Jeanne’s father. Jeanne greets Olympia and has her open the door for them. She turns to Tom and states “Olympia is a compendium of domestic virtues– faithful, admiring, and racist”. After Jeanne’s father died, her family moved back to the family home for a while. She talks about how kids used to play in their backyard, and her strict and religious teacher Mademoiselle Sauvage, once she goes through her photo album inside the house. Olympia interrupts to say Sauvage was too good and spoiled her. The camera crew tries to turn to film Olympia, but she hides when they do. Continuing, Jeanne points out her best friend Christine in one picture who married a pharmacist and has two children. Olympia interrupts again to say she could never live in Paris. The crew turns to film her, but she closes the door immediately after. Jeanne stops everything because she considers looking into her past to be odd, but Tom cuts and tries to tell her how great it is to showcase her childhood. Tom has the crew go outside the door and opens all the doors in the house to set up his next shot, explaining that he’s doing it to put her in a “reverse gear” mindset.

He has Jeanne close her eyes to imagine herself when she was young, and she speaks aloud about her father when he served in Algeria, while brushing her hand across framed pictures of her family. Tom counts down the ages of what she is to imagine (15, 14, 13, etc.). She stops him when he says “8” and remembers crawling under a table in the room, grabbing a notebook from inside of it where she used to do her homework. The theme was the countryside. She laughs reading it, as it speaks on the four parts of a cow. Next, she reads about her cultural sources stated in it and how she just copied it from Le Grand Larousse. In it is the definitions of menstruation and a penis. Sometime after, she finds a drawing of her first love, her cousin Paul. She would remember him playing the piano divinely. After church on Sundays, they would sit in the yard under their own tree and stare into each other’s eyes. She walks with the film crew outside as she does it and talks about how great it is to have this “jungle” of sorts outside, only to find a group of kids taking a shit in her yard. She yells at them, and Olympia chases them away yelling, “Oh, these dirty little Arabs! Go and shit in your own country!”. The film crew gets everything. Jeanne tells Tom that Olympia was great and that her appearance in the film will “give a good idea of race relations in the suburbs of Paris”. Jeanne is about to leave to meet “someone for work”, but Tom now wants five more minutes to hear about her father. Following this, Jeanne is without a shirt in the apartment, while Paul lies on the bed. She talks about her father, the colonel. She talks about his green eyes, shiny boots, and how she “worshipped him”. When she comments how handsome he was in uniform, Paul says it’s all bullshit. Everything outside the room they’re in is bullshit, and he doesn’t want to hear about her stories or her past or anything like that. Even so, Jeanne continues by saying her father died in Algeria in 1958, but he tells her to stop talking about things that don’t matter and that it doesn’t matter what year it happened. She angrily stands by the window, and he starts playing the harmonica. She joins Paul on the bed and wonders why he doesn’t go back to America. He chalks it up to bad memories.

When she inquires further, Paul talks about his drunk father (“tough, whore-fucker, bar fighter, super masculine”). His mother was poetic but also a drunk. He recalls her being arrested in the nude once. They lived on a farm in a small town, and she would regularly be gone or in jail or something. He remembers how his chore was to milk the cow every day and he enjoyed it. One day though, he was going to take this girl to a basketball game, but his father wouldn’t let him go without milking the cow and refused to do it for him the one time he asked. Not having enough time to change his shoes, Paul did it but got cowshit all over his shoes and it smelled for the entire ride with his date. With this, he realizes “I can’t remember very many good things” in regard to his life. One positive memory is that of a farmer he worked for. He was nice guy who smoked a clay pipe and sometimes wouldn’t even put tobacco in it. His spit would run down the pipe stem and hang onto the bowl of the pipe, and Paul would make bets to himself on when it would fall off. He always lost though because he never saw it fall off. Paul remembers that his mother taught him to love nature, they used to live by a meadow, they had a black dog named Dutchy that would hunt for rabbits but wouldn’t catch anything because he couldn’t see them, and how beautiful it all was. Jeanne jokes that he’s been had and makes fun of his previous words, saying she doesn’t want to know anything about his past. Paul suggests he wasn’t telling her the truth but smiles and says, “maybe”.

Paul and Jeanne have come into each other’s lives just when they both need it, and they will continue this strange arrangement for quite some time. However, when more is revealed, the less fulfilled they become.

My Thoughts:

Last Tango in Paris is one of the most controversial films of all time, and it shouldn’t surprise viewers too much as to why when watching the movie, especially in context with the time period it came out. Even with all of this in mind and acknowledging the darker portions of the story, there is greatness beneath the surface that cements Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic drama as an artistic triumph.

As certifiably insane as Marlon Brando was, his performance as Paul cannot be denied. In an Oscar-worthy turn, the dejected expatriate is facing a crossroads in his life because his wife’s suicide is still very fresh. People react differently to death and the act of taking one’s own life, and watching Paul’s evolution through the events of Last Tango in Paris and his strictly sexual relationship with the young Jeanne is richly fascinating to watch. It’s the type of performance that has finally made me understand the term “magnetism” when referring to the stars. Before this film, I knew of Marlon Brando’s greatness as an actor, but I never understood people’s attraction to him. Many biographies, documentaries, articles, and firsthand accounts have referred to the acting icon as a sex symbol in his prime, despite his relatively average looks, while also acknowledging how volatile of a person he was and how unprofessional he became on and off sets. Though I have always noted his acting ability and how ahead of his time he was, I never fully bought into the constant praise of what is considered to be his “presence” onscreen. However, his role as Paul made it click in my head. Truth be told, the character itself seems to align with a lot of the negative stories we have heard about Brando over the years, such as his ability to be romantic with his partners but also turn into a tyrant in an instant if a trigger word or movement is used to challenge him. Paul can be likable in one scene and shockingly evil in another, but for some reason, we as the viewer cannot help but want to see more of him. He has this magnetism about him, and you want to follow him and learn more about this strange character and what his deal is, which is only intensified by his insistence to not talk about any of that stuff with Jeanne. He’s undeniably a weird guy and he has this dangerous aura to him before he goes about actually doing some of the more deplorable things he does. Even so, there is this mysterious charisma he has with just an expression or a few choice words and a glance that Jeanne and the audience itself cannot help but be attracted to. It’s not even sexual. In fact, Paul is unpredictable and downright wicked.

At times, his actions are followed or magnified with music that would fit a horror film, and he responds in anger and vitriol at the most random times, like when he shuts off the power of his own hotel to freak out his mother-in-law, or shouts at the body of his deceased wife, “You whore! I hope you rot in hell. You’re worse than the dirtiest street pig that anybody can find anywhere because you know why? You lied, and I trusted you. Go on, smile, you cunt!”. At the same time, his words and actions only bring you in further instead of making you want to turn off the movie, as he cries on the deceased Rosa’s chest apologizing and wondering aloud how he didn’t know why she killed herself. What started as an airing out of grievances by opening the crucial scene with him stating that even if a husband “lives 200 fucking years, he’s never going to be able to discover his wife’s real nature” and that “I might be able to comprehend the universe, but I’ll never be able to discover the truth about you. Who the hell were you?” turns into a step into grieving and eventual acceptance to move on, especially after that old prostitute tried to get into the hotel and the guy with her ran off once he came to his senses. This is the magnetism Brando has as Paul. As bad the character can be, he’s still mystifying enough to draw us back in to wanting to understand him, as he speaks with such raw emotion on his experiences. It’s just seeing this bizarre individual and wanting to know his story because Brando holds a presence that very few movie stars have had. He doesn’t need the looks of a Brad Pitt, the hair of a Clint Eastwood, or the domineering stature of a John Wayne. Marlon Brando’s attraction onscreen is visible because of his emotionality, an unconventional look, an energy he resonates as if he doesn’t care about anything that is happening around him or what people may think of him, and an irrefutable aura. It’s truly amazing what he was able to accomplish as an actor while looking at cue cards on set because of his refusal to learn lines. Without a doubt, this was one of the best performances of the year.

Despite the menace Paul is, Brando is real as the complicated character, and we want to keep going back to him to see how his arc concludes. Jeanne has the same problem (“It makes me crazy that your so damn sure that I’ll come back here!”, which prompts a smile from Paul). She has several chances to leave her short-term “agreement” with Paul, but she still feels the need to go back to tell him. One of the final times she does, she’s in her wedding dress to tell him that she’s staying with Tom. However, the most important trait of the vial Paul is that of his ability to manipulate. The audience acknowledges his odd charisma, which is why the story becomes so interesting, but the real trick is that Paul himself is aware of the power he holds on others, just like Brando knew in real life. When Jeanne shows up in her wedding dress from the rain, Paul is in the elevator, uncaring and doing his own thing. She is the one who initiates things and talks about how she wanted to leave but couldn’t and asks if he still wants her. It’s baffling because this conversation is well after the infamous scene where Paul uses butter as lube and anally rapes her (he cums after spouting off nonsense like “Holy family, church of good citizens”, “The children are tortured until they tell their first lie”, and “Where freedom is assassinated by egotism”), but the viewer has to keep in mind the mental stranglehold the much older Paul has over the impressionable 20-year-old and how his uncaring demeanor, mood swings, and ability to attract those near with his idiosyncratic style is able to manipulate Jeanne in any way he sees fit. When we look at the aftermath of the uncomfortable rape scene, she buys him a record player as a gift. Noting how he likes surprises, which comes off as a tone-deaf joke considering what he put Jeanne through minutes prior, he goes over to it (flipping backward to his feet in a wildly athletic move that only further magnifies his aforementioned aura of weirdness) and helps her turn it on. He holds this domination over her, can do whatever he damn well pleases, and he can get away with it. That’s what it has come to, and Jeanne hasn’t realized it yet internally, which is why she finds herself right back at that apartment, a place where time stands still.

Early on, they establish that the outside world doesn’t matter in that room, and their backstories and lives don’t matter either. It’s just about two interesting strangers meeting up and fulfilling their sexual needs before going out to the real world to go about their tasks. Inside this apartment, this different world entirely, they forget about their lives and the real problems they face. This is the selling point for both of them once Paul sets the ground rules. Though Paul has to run a hotel, deal with his mother-in-law, and face the funeral service of his wife who just recently killed herself, none of this exists in that apartment. It’s a release both mentally and sexually. With Jeanne, she doesn’t have to talk about her childhood on camera to her filmmaker fiancé when she’s with Paul. She doesn’t have to deal with Tom’s behavior and putting her on camera. Actually, it’s hard to say how badly she wants to get married to him, despite how excited she seemed when he asked. Tom filming their interactions and their lives almost makes their life fake, which is why she’s attracted to the realness, or what she sees it as, of Paul’s apartment. She’d much rather go to that apartment and turn off the outside world like it’s a light switch. This utopia they created becomes attractive, which is why she enjoys the secretive and mysterious Paul and is receptive to a lot of what goes on between them until the abuse reaches a boiling point. It blurs the line for her on what’s real and what’s not too. During the scene at the train station where she yells across the tracks at Tom that she wants someone else to be in his film instead of her, she accuses Tom of taking advantage of her “because you make me do things I’ve never done. Because you’re taking up my time. You make me do whatever you want!”, and though she is right, all of what she says can be attributed to Paul just as well, especially with his later actions.

Nevertheless, her showing up in that wedding dress basically confirms to Paul that he has her on a string. He drops her on the bed as soon as they walk in, but she freaks out because there’s a dead rat there. Naturally, she’s disgusted and exclaims that she can’t make love on that bed anymore knowing there was a rat on it. As unbothered as can be, Paul is fine with it saying, “Well, we’ll fuck on the radiator or standing on the mantel”. Then, he grabs the rat by the tail and jokingly takes it to the kitchen to add some mayonnaise to it. Knowing Brando though, he might have been serious. Either way, Jeanne tries to use this as her final straw to break through Paul’s grasps, bringing up how he she’s in love with Tom while she goes to the door. Unfortunately, Paul closes the door on her and forces her to take a bath on account of pneumonia. In this wild sequence, he has a washcloth and bathes the now happy Jeanne, though anytime she mentions Tom’s merits, Paul lightly hits her on the head and pushes her underwater. They trade insults like her calling him old, fat, how he’s losing his hair, and the other half of it is white, and he responds by saying she’ll be playing soccer with her tits in ten years, and he’ll be laughing and giggling to eternity. After they discuss Tom’s sexual prowess and the unimpressed Paul says the best fuck she’s going to get is in this apartment, she starts to fall for his hypnotizing words once again. He goes on about how she’s only doing this because she doesn’t want to feel lonely and she won’t be free of that feeling of being alone until she looks death right in the face like he has. Jeanne gives him credit and essentially says Paul represents this ideal to her, so he sees his chance. He has her clip two fingernails on her right hand and go through something to basically confirm her devotion to him, a sexual rite of passage one could say. Now, I understand how shocking and vile this scene was considered to be by many people back in the 1970s and even now, but I have to admit I cackled when Paul was being dead serious saying, “I want you to put your fingers up my ass”. His doubling down in anger of, “Put your fingers up my ass! Are you deaf?” had me on the floor laughing.

Of all the abuse Jeanne has taken and has been recognized, this made Brando look humiliatingly bad and I couldn’t help but laugh at how outrageous it was. With that being said, the point of the moment in Jeanne devoting herself to Paul was felt right after these two hilarious quotes, as Paul delivers one of the most disgusting monologues you may ever hear in a mainstream film that makes you question how a writer could even conjure up such insane dialogue:

“I’m going to get a pig, and I’m going to have the pig fuck you, and I want the pig to vomit in your face, and I want you to swallow the vomit. You’re gonna do that for me?”. After she cries “Yes”, Paul continues with, “I want the pig to die while you’re fucking him, and then you have to go behind him – I want u to smell the dying farts of the pig. You gonna do all that for me?”. Jeanne cries more in agreeance and confirms she will do more than that and worse. Later, she still inexplicably goes back to the apartment and cries when she sees Paul is gone. That is the power he held over her for this short period of time. Again, it’s shocking and almost repulsive, but what happens with Jeanne, her relationship with Paul, and how it affects her life, is indisputably captivating. Without having to say it, we know that this man will hold a place in her subconscious for a lifetime, especially if she noticed him putting his gum under the railing of the balcony during the ending. She even tries to recreate the magic of that special world in the apartment with Tom instead, but once he views it and doesn’t think it’s a place they can call home as adults, it changes Jeanne’s worldview in that very moment, just as the audience makes the switch with her. We recall her talking about how she felt like a child again in that apartment when she was with Paul, but after Tom brings up how they need something for adults, the wonder and joy is gone, and she comes to terms with what her future husband is saying. When she closes the curtains to unofficially say goodbye to this near utopia, she says goodbye to Paul and this strange period in her life. By the time Paul runs up to her on the street to start things up again following his coming to terms with Rosa’s death, and he starts revealing things to her about himself to start a real relationship with her, the magic is gone, as it would anytime someone says, “I’m 45. I’m a widower. I got a hotel” and “My wife killed herself”. This is the understated genius of Last Tango in Paris. When you shove all the sex scenes to the side and take a look at the story and how the characters effect one another, it’s phenomenally done. The acting is impeccable. There is no need to convince us of what’s happening through long-winded conversations.

The energy Mara Schneider’s Jeanne has while looking at the now jovial Paul, who wants to change the dynamic of their relationship by breaking the rules he established since they’re not in the apartment anymore and are in the real world, reveals that the anxious and unpredictable sexual tension between them is gone. The intimacy isn’t felt anymore when they are speaking to each other in the tango bar that he takes her to right after. Though they do share some drinks and have some fun dancing, it’s an entirely different dynamic between the two. The air is let out of the room, and before she says it, we know Jeanne is officially over Paul and his antics. She can now see him for what he is, and his real-life story takes the mysteriousness away from him and hurts him. Now that he’s smooth and clean and shows a bit of his wealth, he doesn’t ooze the same charisma. It’s all gone. Him ordering drinks and asking her to take a sip “for daddy” comes off as weird as its read, along with his line of “If you love me, you’ll drink all of it”. Despite all that has happened in this wild film, this is surprisingly one of the more uncomfortable moments, as the holes of Paul are now seen as clear as Swiss cheese. If Paul were to tell Jeanne in the second act that he loved her and wanted to live with her, she’d rejoice and we’d be intrigued to see where it goes, but when he says it in the tango bar at this stage of the film, there is an internal alarm going off that screams, “DANGER”. When we knew less about Paul and he was just existing in the moment, we wanted him to be there, just like Jeanne did. When it came to the tango bar and Paul starts unloading, “I picked up a nail when I was in Cuba in 1948, and now I got a prostate like an Idaho potato” and how if he didn’t meet her, he’d settle for a “hard chair and a hemorrhoid”, you start to imagine yourself in Jeanne’s position, looking around and wondering, “How can I find a way to get the fuck out of here?”. Unfortunately, the only way she can is jerking him off under the table.

Though we don’t know too much about Rosa, we know enough about Paul to understand how their marriage went. Marcel points out how she had a “strange violence” about her, which is funny because that is exactly how I would characterize Paul. When Paul shaves in the bathroom mirror and Jeanne asks about his issues with women, he explains, “Either they always pretend to know who I am, or they pretend that I don’t know who they are, and that’s very boring”. It gives just enough insight on Rosa’s effect on him, how it shapes his newfound attitude and lack of respect for someone like Jeanne, and how the earlier portions of his life may have led him there as well.

The tango bar scene is a feather in the cap to the story really. The buildup to it up until this point in the story makes sense of every word spoken between the two, and though it is uncomfortable, it’s pivotal to making this movie something to remember. Paul sets it all up by commenting, “The tango is a rite” while watching the dancers. Once Paul continues to talk about his love for Jeanne and changes the subject when she asks about his wife and how she would rather go to a private hotel with him rather than in public at this bar, the ten best couples are chosen for the tango competition happening on the dance floor. All of it leads to the movie-defining words of the emcee of the bar that echoes into our cinephile brains, “And now ladies and gentlemen, good luck for the last tango!”. In this moment, it’s as if Jeanne is given one last chance. Will she accept tangoing as her last rite of passage like he says (“When something is finished, it begins again. Don’t you see?”), or will she finally escape this maniac and move on for good? What follows is a hair-raising climax, but it’s undoubtedly one of the best finales I’ve seen in ages, capped off with a transfixing closeup of an emotional Brando overlooking the city of Paris that stays with you.

I can say it without flinching for a second. No matter how graphic the content can be, the powerfully erotic and vivid Last Tango in Paris is a spellbinding watch. Calling it “pornography disguised as art” is laughable. Obviously, it’s not for the faint of heart as its portrayal of love, sex, death, and violence is no holds barred in its nature, but Bernardo Bertolucci, and leads Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider put together a mesmerizing feature that needs to be seen in context. It’s not without blemishes or anything, as it does have a fair number of scenes and conversations that don’t seem entirely needed, but I highly recommend it for those that can handle it because the narrative and the journey these characters go on is that gripping.

Fun Fact: Bernardo Bertolucci wanted to cast Jean-Louis Trintignant and Dominique Sanda as the leads, but Trintignant refused. By the time Brando was cast, Sanda was pregnant and decided not to do it.