Last Tango In Paris (Ultimo Tango A Parigi) - Bernardo Bertolucci

If you must tell someone about a film, then perhaps say something original? No tedious 'saying of the plot'?

Isn't it possible to take a fix on Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris that is slightly different to the one usually found in the analysis? Surely it's possible to see an intent in Brando's tortured man - a scheme that he tries to accomplish. The usual 'take' on the story is that he is a traumatized man seeking forgetfulness in anonymous sex. But perhaps it's possible instead to see a traumatized man seeking a 'second go at it'. To see a man having been traumatized by his utter failure to understand his wife (A collector of men? A controller of men? Self-centred? Self-destructive?) who then tries a different approach with this new young woman. A man who tries to control the slide by understanding her bit by bit and every one of these bits in the correct order so that nothing escapes him - the 'her' without name and almost without language even, the sexual her, the listening her, then the recounting her, the her with a history therefore, the her with a name . . . and so on. Women have kept him in the dark, so far. Is it that this time he tries to start from the very base, tries to move step by careful step - he will see her dissembling if there is any to see, he will not be left in the dark, and he will come to enjoy a mutual love finally? "We left the apartment. And now we begin again with love and all the rest of it." Does this man have an intent that is not usually granted him in the analysis? That's not to diminish any, Paul's flight from grief and anger over the inexplicable suicide of his wife and flight towards the distraction and the expression granted by raw sex - stuff that is made much of in the analysis of Last Tango In Paris. Rather is it to move the emphasis away from 'man who is trying to heal himself' and towards 'man who is trying to understand'.

Of course Last Tango In Paris has it all go wrong. Of course Brando's Paul fails to understand this girl just as he failed to understand that woman who was his wife. He is clearly understandable: but Schneider's Jeanne is she understandable? Oh dear. Does she really adore her fiancé as she says, why does she fuck behind his back; does she really love Paul as she clearly says, why does she end it with him - and why does she murder him? Who knows for sure? Isn't it likely that Bertolluci kept Maria Schneider deliberately in the dark about her character so that were she to have to answer that dread question "Why on earth did you do that?" the character would have to poutingly answer "I don't know." And she's not being disingenuous. Isn't this the real motivation behind Last Tango In Paris - Bertolucci's fascination, or irritation perhaps, with the sort of woman like this wife and like this ripe girl who really cannot give a clear answer to why their behaviour is so disgusting and so baffling? The very last lines of Last Tango In Paris have the girl formulating the 'excuses' she will give to the authorities (read - to the world) and these words from this type of woman are designed not to outright lie, but to conceal - to baffle understanding. Isn't the subject of this movie Bertolucci's fascination (irritation?) with these women at least as much as it is about Bertolucci's interest in a traumatized man (a part which probably unexpectedly distorted a balance, once Brando had got hold of it)?

And then there's the doors in Last Tango In Paris. Isn't there? Perhaps it's obvious once it's 'seen'. Bertolucci shouts them out loud and bangs on them to get his audience to notice his doors! The story even begins with one - a broad glass door barring the way to a blurred but golden place within; and next to it a sign: Appartement a louer. Bertolucci bangs on his doors - it is right after he is asked why his wife committed suicide, right after he repeats the question to himself, that Paul punches the door with both fists. Bertolucci shouts out his doors - Jeanne's fiancé throws open doors connecting room after room, in a different apartment this time, and he tells his fiancé to walk backwards to her childhood (for this little film of theirs). "The door. I'm opening the door. I'm opening all the doors. ( - ) Find your childhood."      

Does Bertolucci have a meaning for his doors? It is so very contrived. Perhaps it is that the doors in Last Tango In Paris are the openings (and closed doors the barriers) to understanding? The 'understanding' of someone, the grasp you have of them.

The stakes are high; should you fail to get a clear grasp of how things actually are, then trauma is a likely consequence, followed by a deep anger. Jeannes will fuck behind your back and you will not understand why (Jeannes themselves may not clearly understand either); Jeannes will truthfully love you at one moment, but at another moment not so very far off they truthfully will not; wives will have a lover whom they wish to dress in an identical pair of pajamas; wives will commit suicide and leave even mothers baffled as to why. In Last Tango In Paris are doors the portals to some small chance of reaching this understanding?

Is the door which Paul hits (a blank barrier which he never was able to swing open) the door to understanding his wife? Are the doors that Jeanne backs through for her fiancé's film, the doors to understanding via her childhood? Another door stands between Paul and his mother-in-law while they are trying to make sense of his wife's suicide, the door to his wife's rooms this time. The camera slowly moves in until the 'people' are off-shot, and only the object is left on screen and held on screen for an oddly long moment - the object is a door with a notice on it: 'Private'. Later, Paul closes the door on his mother-in-law; out in the corridor a nosy neighbour quickly closes her door, then opens it again just a fraction; Paul approaches this door, takes it, and fiercely pulls it shut. Is it that Paul does not need to 'understand' these people and indeed the suggestion that he might be interested in doing so is merely an irritation to him? (After Paul has slammed that door shut, Bertolucci makes an immediate 'cut' to another door, to Jeanne opening the door to the lovers' musty apartment.) All the way through Last Tango In Paris, by the way, there are glimpses of the door to the room where the couple first fuck - it has been removed and stands leaning against a wall. And return to the movie's beginning - the very first conversation between Paul and Jeanne is directly focused on a door.

"How did you get in?"
"The door."
'Yes, I left the door open."
"I was already here."

Jeanne is prone to leaving doors open isn't she. Is she inviting people to try to understand her? Surely there is not much chance of that succeeding: her behaviour is not consistent. She's not a joined-up person surely. At one point she is surprised on the floor of the apartment stalking a stray cat; she is surprised by a removals' man carrying a chair. "You might have rung." is the complaint. "The door was open." is the retort. She's been surprised. Strangers keep coming through the door (she has to retreat a couple of times) and the strangers are carrying furniture - furniture, of course, which is linked to Paul for it is he who has ordered it. Is this Paul, despite himself for it is as yet too early, trying to force forward too quickly his understanding of her? Elsewhere, Olympia (Jeanne's nanny) makes a comment while Jeanne's own film is being shot, the camera turns 180 degrees towards her and she - hides behind a door. Is she guarding her privacy, closing the door to any understanding of her by these strangers? And what about the question of when a woman is to make one of those many little leaps of 'understanding' into her own self? Jeanne extends her hand to receive the key to the apartment for the very first time, and the concierge grabs the hand, cackles that Jeanne must be really young, and for a moment it seems that this unsettling woman might even yank the girl through this little glass 'door' into - what? The place where the 'grown-ups' live? A place where one is supposed to be, at the very least, trying to understand oneself? This shifting into adulthood and into understanding is a theme that is also played between Jeanne and her fiancé. It is he who sees it more urgently for it is he who has proposed marriage, but Jeanne herself is already drifting towards that adulthood as well. He tells her

"We must become adults."
"How?"
"Inventing gestures, words . . ."

Which is of course what she has already been rehearsing (but perhaps hasn't fully embraced yet) with Paul while fucking behind her fiancé's back. Is that little glass door in Last Tango In Paris another portal to 'understanding', the understanding that comes from being adult, a portal which the concierge sees that Jeanne is yet to go through?

And of course there is that important last closed door in Last Tango In Paris, the door to Jeanne's home behind which Paul is to be murdered. She tries to close it on him but she's not quick enough. Formerly she was desperate for Paul to try to 'understand' her and she used to let him in. Now she desperately doesn't want that. Does she kill him because he has violated the 'door' to understanding her? Because he has pushed his way into the place which she wishes to remain inexplicable? A place where explanations might be - her home, her father's uniform, all the rest? I am not sure.

Jeanne enters a Paris bistro to use the telephone. She pushes open a door. The door to a small kiosk. And there she reveals an old woman at a sink where she is scrubbing her false-teeth. If these doors really are the gateways to understanding, then what on earth is going on here then? Do we really want to know, this time.