Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
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What critics compared Last Tango in Paris to
Often compared with the controversial films Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972) and In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976) for its graphic depiction of sexuality, Patrice Chereau's Intimacy (2001) continues in a similar, notorious vein of provocative contemporary cinema, most notably in the perturbative films of Catherine Breillat, that seeks to demystify the conventional, often romanticized presentation of sexuality and capture the stark realism, awkwardness, and imperfection of the act of physical intimacy.
This bleak reflection on the meaning of human intimacy and romantic relationships recalls both "Last Tango in Paris," although here the central relationship touches more than the people engaged in it and "An Affair of Love," although that film's melancholy is replaced with something deeper and darker here.
As a sort of retelling of Last Tango in Paris, the film is a fairly fascinating study of Jay (Mark Rylance), a bartender, and his weekly trick an actress named Claire (Kerry Fox).
Not since Last Tango in Paris has a film so ravishingly explored the many fine connections between desire, physical intimacy, and romance.
Despite citing Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as a tonal touchstone, and nodding cheekily to American Gigolo/Psycho, the result smacks more of Adrian Lyne’s blandly naff 9½ Weeks, the S&M frankness of Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse usurped by the archaic softcore of Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O.
Dornan could have answered, “Have you seen The Story of O.?” Anyone who’s old enough to remember the old fear and hysteria caused by S&M movies like Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour and Tim Blake Nelson’s O and Adrian Lyne’s Nine 1/2 Weeks; or anyone who’s seen Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, and the trashily vicious Color of Night; or anyone who’s watched Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader in the imperfectly exciting Secretary, or watched Girls’s audacious second season or any year of Sex and the City is likely to leave Fifty Shades of Grey perplexed by its uncontroversial mildness.
The 63-year-old Bernardo Bertolucciâs ("Last Tango in Paris"/"Before the Revolution"/"The Sheltering Sky") playful erotic drama The Dreamers is adapted from the 1988 novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance by English author and film critic Gilbert Adair, a book inspired by Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles.
The latest movie from the director of Last Tango in Paris is all about reaffirming wistful memories of a place and time -- Paris, May 1968 -- when revolution seemed possible and worthy, even if the crass commercialists and cynics have long since won out.
Michael Pitt plays the American in Paris who comes into their lives, much like Gene Kelly did in, you know, "An American in Paris", or more aptly, like the then not-so-morbidly obese Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris".
(Could Bertolucci's 30-year-old Last Tango in Paris be anything but Breathless for heavy breathers, complete with climactic big bang?)
As tender and tentative as its trio of young characters, The Dreamers is no successor to Last Tango in Paris -- it's more like a moony, adolescent cousin.
Both The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, the movies that guaranteed him a lifelong career, strike me at bottom as unconvincing theses about the incipience of fascism and the ironic boredom lurking within ribald, anonymous sex.
Director Abdellatif Kechiche, whose previous film “Black Venus” was also controversial in regard to the treatment of his leading lady, combines the subject matter of the new wave landmark “The 400 Blows” with the notoriety of “Last Tango in Paris.”
Bernardo Bertolucci became famous for his on-set trickery and emotional abuse; Maria Schneider said she felt as if she had been raped after the famous anal-sex scene with Marlon Brando in “Last Tango in Paris.”
In short, there are—as Spielberg, of all people, will have noticed—more traces of Truffaut here than there are of “Last Tango in Paris.”
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If you're anticipating the next "Last Tango in Paris," think again.
If the scenario sounds familiar, that's because it's a rethinking of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 Last Tango in Paris , in which two strangers took an apartment together for anonymous sex.
An elegantly droll romance, this feels rather like a belated riposte to Last Tango in Paris.
The implicit rule is that there will be no mention whatsoever of their lives outside the room, a "Last Tango in Paris" all over again.
In particular, one might wonder how the seemingly level-headed Zoe would submit to the caricature that is Whit (who echoes Jean-Pierre Léaud's character in Last Tango in Paris ), or long for more details about Sam and Whit's romantic past.
Initially, Marie's hollowness is a virtue she'd like to hold on to as if her passivity is as complicated and deceptive as the women in "The Story of O," or "Last Tango in Paris," in which Breillat appeared.
Because of its sexual content, Romance is being compared to Last Tango in Paris and In the Realm of the Senses , but its microscopic focus on a single characters psychological state ties it to films such as Cleo From 5 To 7 and Repulsion .
The film’s cinematographer is Vittorio Storaro (“The Last Emperor,” “Last Tango in Paris,” “Apocalypse Now”), who evokes the past in a way that looks like reality dipped in memory, just a little more rich and clear than it ever could have been.
Café Society offers at least one fresh element to latch onto: It’s Allen’s first feature with revered Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, Last Tango In Paris), and the first time both artists have shot a feature on digital instead of celluloid.
Café Society is his first film shot digitally and his first with noted cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, Last Tango In Paris).
Stewart delivers an almost absurdly luminous performance, caressed by the golden hues of legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (of “Last Tango in Paris” and “Apocalypse Now”), who raises Allen’s game immeasurably.
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Hardly the would-be anonymous and impersonal entanglement envisioned by Brandos complex Paul in Last Tango in Paris, 9 Songs is a mere wannabe slice of something-or-other.
When Bertolucci made Last Tango in Paris in 1972, it was almost a revolutionary idea that sex could be portrayed as an expression of rage, or grief, or estrangement, and Brando, in his last great phase as an actor, seemed to wrench all those moods out of his own soul.
The film comes to feel like a woman's rewriting of Last Tango in Paris , with Winslet fearlessly plumbing emotional depths surprising for an actress so young.
We get a sexual power play that's close to the heart of Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) by visual way of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970).