Product: Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Rating: 3.0
Neither Much Fun But Did What It Wanted
If you went to a soccer match and someone asked you how it was, how much sense would it make to say "It was horrible! They just played soccer all afternoon!!"So why complain that a European talking-heads film is full of static, self-indulgent psycho-babble?Actually, I didn't think it was that bad. The back-story is missing, so you have to fill that in. The guy is not that classy but he's sincere within his limitations. He is coming to a dead-end in his life and even though he can see that his own shortcomings contributed you can understand that he's flat and doesn't see much hope for himself. His accosting a random young girl has a "What can I lose?" character to it, and her accepting him seems gradually to have some healing effect.She's full of herself because she has the physical attractiveness of a young women and she's open to adventure and a variety of games. Her criminal but childish selfishness at the end shows how far she has to go to grow up. Not that unusual if you take away the theatrical exaggeration.My middling, three-star rating stems from the film's static pacing, tough-to-see lighting, mumbling, and cheesy saxophone score. We're probably as boring in real life as this film is, but cinema should be able to portray that without actually being boring itself.The comments above all relate to the film overall. On the two leads, I'm hardly an authority but they seem to do their jobs very well. Neither one is glamorously pretty, which gives the drama some grown-up realism about how life is for imperfect people.