Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris)

[pro-bassoonist]

Coming soon to Gallic markets: Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi a.k.a Last Tango in Paris (1972). Specs and release date will be added up later on.

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Richard Dewes:

Maybe not the first art-house film with explicit sex, but certainly the most famous. Marion Brando and Maria Schneider play the couple who, meeting accidently in a vacant Paris flat, agree at his instigation to see each other regularly for sex, divulging nothing of their identities or personal lives. This they do for a while until the pressure of expectation from both sides unleashes a murderous catharsis.

The film broke new ground, primarily because this kind of violent, thrusting, uninhibited passion had never before been shown so clearly. It's the emotional oppoaite of the soft-focus couplings we see in most other films; the extreme frankness here makes faintly uncomfortable viewing. Partly this is because the film is framed by Francis Bacon paintings on the credits, suggesting the exaggerated corporeality of the protagonists: denied emotional connections, their union is reduced to the thunderous collision of a couple of slabs of meat. But partly it's because it's never really clear what motivates Jeanne (Schneider). Paul (Brando) says he's "taking a flying flick at a rolling doughnut" after his wife's suicide - but what's in it for Jeanne, beyond the dubious fulfillment of a hoary male fantasy? Count how many times you see her naked, and compare it to how much screen time his bits get.

We're toying with exploitation here, but then maybe that's inevitable in a film dealing with this kind of subject. Even more than In the Realm of the SensesLast Tango is the sex-film in extremis, and the voyeuristic portrayal of women may just go with the territory. But the lasting power of the film, reprehensible though it possibly is, is in its ability to force us to think about it.

Pro-B