Being Maria is part of the cultural dismantling that has resulted from the era’s calamitous progressive politics. It’s a retrogressive biopic about the late French actress Maria Schneider, best known for her role opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, one of the defining films of the 1970s.
Schneider’s career spiraled after Last Tango’s release in 1972, but her reputation was set by a belated allegation in 2007 that Last Tango’s star and director had humiliated her. This is the impetus of Jessica Palud’s biopic, reducing Schneider’s destiny to one moment during the production of one film, making her both victim and martyr.
But because Palud slanders one of the all-time greatest works of cinema, the raison d’être behind Being Maria is questionable, an ideological ambush. Pauline Kael’s legendary review of Last Tango predicted, “It will be argued about for as long as there are movies.” Who suspected the argument would impugn the motives and integrity of the artists who made it?
After Schneider’s death in 2011, her allegation became fodder for the Me Too movement’s manipulation of feminism, part of the media campaign taking down Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Brett Kavanaugh, plus Brando and Bertolucci. And although Being Maria is dedicated to Schneider’s memory, it also consumes her in that purge.
Positing Last Tango as Schneider’s formative experience (she was 19, Brando was 48), Palud presents her personal background as merely circumstantial — she was the illegitimate daughter of French actor Daniel Gélin but raised by a vengeful single mother. This misconstrues the nature of family and the male-female relationships essential to Last Tango and that made it significant: It’s the story of two strangers who embark on a sexual adventure that turns tragic because of social and emotional differences — when they begin to know each other and reveal their names and separate histories.
The controversial humiliation scene — an improvised sexual encounter — was neither real penetration, nor explicit exposure, but when Schneider later said she “felt raped,” activists and media shills commandeered that loaded term and ignored her emotional vulnerability. Palud follows the same aberration when Being Maria tracks Schneider’s descent into heroin addiction, her wayward film career, family turmoil, and bisexuality.
Palud misses Bertolucci’s profound insight into psychology and behavior, the contest of masculine aggression and female submission that is dramatized when Brando’s Paul forces Schneider’s Jeanne to repeat his litany of angry protestations (blaming religion, education, savagery, family, punishment, lies). The scene is straight out of a stratagem by Pier Paolo Pasolini (Bertolucci’s mentor), but Palud takes it literally without applying comparable ideological critique to the rest of her film. (Bertolucci already supplied the critique in Last Tango’s Godardian “Le mariage pop” sequence.)
Being Maria’s failure results from the cultural disintegration that occurred since Last Tango’s premiere. It is the single greatest work of movie art from the sexual revolution. (“What do the rest of us think we’re doing?” Robert Altman responded at the time.) Yet critics and journalists can longer trace its antecedents to An American in Paris, Bonjour Tristesse and Breathless, thus proving our detachment from our Western moral foundations. Is it possible for us to respond to movies honestly, personally anymore?
This film is naïve about how art is made. Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) displays no geniality or brilliance. Brando (Matt Dillon) is no more than an exact exterior facsimile. But Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei) is a recessive characterization. The actress’s reserve may be a sign of respect, as in Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but Palud misses the ebullience and passion that Vartolomei had in Bruno Dumont’s The Empire. Scenes between Brando and Schneider include an on-set waltz, but without the heat of Gato Barbieri’s memorable jazz score, nothing comes close to Last Tango’s rapport and honesty.
The final tragedy is that Maria Schneider’s indelible Jeanne must compete with ideologues who exploit her image to achieve a film culture equivalent to the Christine Blasey Ford hoax. Schneider’s other notable projects — such as Antonioni’s The Passenger with Jack Nicholson, Jacque Rivette’s Merry-Go-Round, and an inspirational role in Cyril Collard’s Savage Nights — amount to a genuine cinema legacy, but the Me Too movement not only minimizes Schneider’s humanity and artistry, it degrades us, too.