Product: Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Rating: 2.0
"Last Tango" is remarkable--for having achieved so little
Few films are as remarkable as "Last Tango In Paris" (1972) for having achieved so little with the immense possibilities of its concept, director, production crew and cast, or its romantic location--Paris.Pauline Kael surely blushes at the pull quote attributed to her on the DVD case, "The most powerfully erotic movie ever made!". To be sure, we see that the gamin young Maria Schneider is a fine figure of a woman, but her character, Jeanne, portrays the kind of femininity mythologised in machismo--a preparedness, even a desire, to be sexually humiliated, unmitigated even by the emphatic terms on which the relationship ends. The word "love" is used, here and there, in extraordinarily barren circumstances. Paul (Marlon Brando's character) mumbles through the film with a degree of self-absorption approaching autism. There are widely separated good scenes, such as the tango competition. The dialogue hardly ever gets better than Paul saying, "I have a prostate like an Idaho potato, but I'm still a good stick man".The claim of the film to have been "the most controversial film of its era" (fewer blushes, perhaps, for Leonard Maltin) rests not so much on its explicitness, but its emotional shallowness combined with uses of butter which could never be embraced by the dairy industry.So why see this film at all? Perhaps, to see how even a great chef, with excellent ingredients, may sometimes produce a flopped soufflé. To consider the question, "What is (not) erotica?". To study the career of Marlon Brando. Also, perhaps, to examine our own emotional development and to feel good comparatively about ourselves. Almost anyone will have deeper understanding and experience of love, or obsession, between men and women than is displayed here.For classy erotica, look elsewhere. Many better and more erotic and romantic films are based on similar themes of troubled characters in cross-cultural sexual obsession--such as Wayne Wang's "Chinese Box" (1997). As for making good use of Paris, check out Stanley Donen's "Charade" (1963), with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which is erotic only by suggestion, as well as having a sparkling and funny script, and enjoyable over-acting.Director Bernardo Bertolucci is far better than "Last Tango". So, even he has made a far better film about cross-cultural sexual obsession. He returns to the theme in his 1999 film, "Besieged". This makes wonderful use of one of the most photogenic and stagelike settings in Rome, the Spanish Steps and the Piazza di Spagna. "Besieged" also has more humanity, more complex characterisation, and builds suggestive, musical and explicit eroticism between the characters of Thandie Newton and David Thewlis. In many ways, it seems Bertolucci's atonement for the failings of "Last Tango".(This review refers to the widescreen MGM year 2000 DVD reissue of "Last Tango In Paris".)Update in December 2011: for information of those who have voted against my low rating of this flopped soufflé, my assessment is as firm as ever after all these years, and I have no regrets whatsoever that my review does not meet your artistically perverted expectations. My reasons are amplified in attached comments.