Romancefest 2011: Last Tango in Paris

My viewing of LAST TANGO IN PARIS the other day was a long time coming. Back in high school, when I used to browse the aisles of the video store for art flicks and foreign films, I must have picked this one up and considered it several times. For whatever reason, I never got around to it. I don't know if that's in spite of the controversy surrounding the film or because of it -- on one hand, it is well known as a sexually explicit film, one of the few serious flicks branded with the X rating before the X rating disappeared. On the other, it's not renowned as a particularly pleasant film going experience.

LAST TANGO is one of the flicks often cited as an example of the revolutionary nature of filmmaking in the 70s, when art suddenly went mainstream before almost disappearing in the face of big blockbusters. Of course, that's a false dichotomy -- plenty of art films are still hits and plenty of hits count as art. But, most historians agree, there was a brief moment in the 70s when it looked like mainstream Hollywood was about to permanently move out of adolescence and into adulthood, only to regress big time.

The story involves a recently widowed, middle-aged American living in Paris (Marlon Brando) whose wife (Veronica Lazar) has committed suicide. From the first shot of the film to the last, Brando's violent, confused, raw anguish is front and center. He encounters a woman in her early 20s (the late Maria Schneider) when they both show up to check out the same apartment. Within seconds of meeting each other, they're on the floor engaged in particularly vicious sex, bordering on rape. Soon, the unlikely couple has made plans to meet in the apartment, and only in the apartment, to have anonymous sex. Brando's rules -- they can't share names or any other personal information with each other. Schneider agrees to the sex easily enough, but pushes against the no-names, no info rules.

In their personal lives outside the apartment, Brando continues to struggle with the meaning of his past relationship with his deceased wife, in light of her suicide, visiting with her oblivious mother (Maria Michi) and the man she was having an affair with (Massimo Girotti). Schneider is dating a pretentious fool of a filmmaker (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who is consumed with making a documentary about his relationship with her. Neither character's emotional lives are particularly fulfilling, which I guess is why they meet up for the anonymous sex.

Now that I've seen it, I can say I'm glad I didn't watch it as a teenager. I wouldn't have understood it. I'm not sure I understand it now. This is a truly adult film -- meaning, for adults -- from an era when adults existed. I feel like these days, everyone's basically a big kid. I was raised in the post-TANGO era, so I don't know if I'll ever really be able to "get" this kind of stuff the way a guy my age in 1972 could probably get it.

For most of the running time I was a little annoyed by the artsy aspects of the film, and a little annoyed Maria Schneider's character seemed to buy into Brando's bullshit. I mean, meeting someone for anonymous sex is meeting someone for anonymous sex, it's not exactly the deepest philosophical thing in the world. However, the film redeemed itself a little bit in the end when Schneider started to wake up to the boorish lout Brando actually is, and I began to see the point of the story.

You can make up rules, and lie to yourself, and tell yourself you're being honest with others, and draw boundaries, but in the end you feel the way you feel, and that changes based on circumstances. You can run from confusion, or embrace it -- run from emotions, or embrace them. Still, you can't avoid who you are, where you are, what you're doing. Ultimately, you're trapped inside yourself, no matter how much you try to lose yourself. What's better -- make peace with that and transcend that way, or keep searching for transcendence somewhere else?