Revue de la “ be maria '': the star of the “last tango” spoke of empathy

When the Cinémathèque français tried to show the film by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1972 “Last Tango in Paris” as part of a retrospective by Marlon Brando, the organizers finally canceled the projection after a vociferating demonstration of women's rights groups.

His infamous rape scene – simulated but filmed without the knowledge or consent of the star of the 19 -year -old star, Maria Schneider – has become a flash point #MeToo for abusive practices in an industry dominated by men. Decades after making the film, in an interview that aroused new outrage, Bertolucci said that by not saying to his co-leader what he and Brando had designed for the scene, he provided a real answer, not a rehearsal. What has become cruelly neglected is the more important effect of such coercion: a lasting trauma for Schneider, whose outspokenness over the years on his experience has generally gone unnoticed.

The first point of view is the French film “Being Maria” by director Jessica Palud, in which a memorable Anamaria vartolomei Play Schneider from 15 to 30 years old, and hope not tested at survivor blasé. Inspired by a biographical thesis published by the cousin of Schneider seven years after the actor Died in 2011It is a representation with sensitivity of what it has gone through, even if it disturbs our notion of feminist biopic by supervising Schneider's life as before and trying to live, to be manipulated and attacked in front of the camera for the good of art.

It is a delicate balancing act for any filmmaker (this is the second feature film by Palud), exploring the psychological toll of an incident without establishing it as the key reason that we know someone. But there is enough emotional intelligence inside the most shaky elements of “being maria” that the film actually recognizes that it is only part of a complicated life story.

When the interest of Maria's teenager for the film triggers an emerging relationship with her distant biological father (film star Daniel Gélin, played by Yvan Attal), his avant-garde mother (Marie Gillain) lance. At 19, with a few films to her credit, Maria meets the warm author of Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio), preparing her next drama on anonymous sex between a young Parisian woman and an American age to play by Brando. “You are an actress, right?” He asks, a Maggio line permeates enough charming provocation to suggest that the distinction is bored-it is his injury he is looking for.

On the set, Maria warms up to the playful vulnerability of her emblematic co-star, played with moving intuitivity by a well-sunk Matt Dillon. The shooting of “Tango”, of its first hesitant laughter to the tears and the rage caused, is the longest sequence of this film and it is a paradoxically relaxed but tense marvel of the hidden atmosphere, showing how creativity and camaraderie can be distorted without any control over power. Palud, an online trainee for Bertolucci who obtained an annotated copy of the “Tango” script, would recreate the filming of the cheeky ill -treatment of Schneider but with an opposite angle, capturing the placid expressions of the crew.

This private humiliation designed for public consumption, an incident that has triggered notoriety but rarely emotional support, is everywhere in the enveloping representation of Vartolomei, subtly agonized: distracted, depressed, brittle, defending themselves professionally when the following producers tried to exploit it, but crunching in his peripatetic life. A worsening of heroin dependence ultimately threatens Maria's relationship with a lover, Noor (Céleste Brunnquell), whose attentive attention is welcome after all that was sweated.

But the post-“tango” chronology is also the most choppieuse of the film, subject to the cliché representations of the fall (the dance of the hedonistic club, the collapses fueled by drugs) that what is knotty or illuminating on the particular struggle of Schneider: to forge its own way as a murderous star, spreading not to have the choice.

The emphasis on the director of Palud on this internal experience, guided by a simple shooting style formed on Vartolomei, is what keeps “being maria” afloat on his turbulent seas. When Bertolucci filmed him in a terrible moment, he was lying about the truth he was looking for. Palud, on the other hand, by embracing a long -standing perspective, becomes the coordinator of the intimacy that Schneider has never had.