Last Tango in Paris

I had more Marlon Brando movies to go through from his time as TCM's Star of the Month last April than I realized, and had to watch several in quick succession and do the posts on them before they expired from the DVR. But I've written up the post and saved them as drafts to put up on the site after a sufficient period between posts on Brando movies. At any rate, the next Brando movie up is Last Tango in Paris.

Maria Schneider plays Jeanne, a young woman in Paris who has been living with her mother, but has reached the age where she wants to go out on her own. That, and she's engaged to be married anyhow, to Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud), who makes documentary films. Indeed, much to Jeanne's consternation, he's going to be making one on her, reality TV style, although in those days they didn't do "reality" TV in the way they do it today. In any case, she's looking for an apartment, and asks the concierge for the key to look at one.

However, there's a man up in the apartment, who is also looking for an apartment. That man is Paul (Marlon Brando), an American living in Paris who seems rather depressed for reasons that will be revealed later in the movie to the audience, although not necessarily to Jeanne. Paul comes up with an odd proposal, which is that he and Jeanne should have a sexual relationship, but that the relationship should be only for the sex. Indeed, neither of them should even tell the other their first names. They can use this particular apartment for the sex, but left unstated is how will one of them know when the other is going to show up.

But because we wouldn't have a movie otherwise, Jeanne agrees to this wacky arrangement. She does, however, try to get Paul to reveal something about himself, not that he really will. (Jeanne already figured out Paul is an American as he's not a native French speaker.) We, however, see Paul go back to a hotel, and learn that this is the hotel he manages with his wife. Well, managed, since his wife has died by her own hand, as one of the maids is cleaning out the bathtub where Paul's French wife offed herself.

Jeanne, for her part, didn't exactly have the most virginal upbringing either, in that she had her first sexual experience some year back with a cousin in what looks like one of the small towns in the suburbs of Paris. She grows up and thinks about leaving Paul, but can't bring herself to do it, continuing to have sex with him, including one infamous scene where Paul uses butter since other sexual aids weren't so freely available back in those days. Eventually Paul is the one to break off the relationship, although he decides perhaps that wasn't the best thing. By that time, however, it's too late to start anew.

Last Tango in Paris is one of those movies where it's easy to see why the critics gave it such high reviews. I didn't exactly hate it, but it's another of those movies that rather left me cold on watching it. To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of sex scenes in movies -- I don't particularly care to watch other people having sex. Other people are going to have issues with the sex scenes on the grounds that director Bernardo Bertolucci wasn't fully honest with his lead actress about where the sex scenes were going to go. (I actually didn't know this going into the movie.)

But while Last Tango in Paris is a difficult movie to watch, it's one of those that definitely would have belonged in a season of the old TCM's Essentials series. Watch it if you haven't seen it already.