last tango in paris, proximity to truth (pt9)

the next time jeanne comes to the apartment, paul is not there. she begs the landlady for information, but the landlady says she doesn't know "the man on the fourth floor." of course, she does and she calls jeanne back to say so, but jeanne has dramatically run off again.

after heartbrokenly sobbing on the apartment floor, jeanne calls tom. she tells him she's found an apartment for them and begs him to come right away. the address she gives is 1 rue jules verne (irl this is 1 rue de l'alboni).

when tom arrives, he's impressed at how big the apartment is and he immediately begins directing jeanne (for his own amusement, the crew isn't with him). he has her pretend to be an airplane, etc.

suddenly, tom declares they cannot play like children any more. they have to be adults. since neither of them knows what this means, tom says they'll "have to invent the words and the gestures."

just as suddenly, tom decides he cannot possibly live in this apartment. it stinks (literally). jeanne protests, but tom is adamant. they will find someplace else.

they wind up leaving on good terms, but separately. jeane is walking exactly where she was at the beginning of the movie when paul runs up to her.

paul cheerfully introduces himself. he says he's 45 and a "widower" (he doesn't mention the details on that). he says he owns a hotel that's "not a flop house."

bewildered, jeanne asks about the flop house. paul starts to answer, then he says, "what do you care if it's a flop house? do you love me or not?"

paul tells her that their days in the apartment are over (as far as them only meeting there), so they can have names and histories now. he's very interested in getting to know all about her.

last tango in paris, proximity to truth (pt.7)

jeanne, after yet another argument with her mother, announces she's getting married. her mother asks, to whom and jeanne replies "tom."

needless to say, tom wants to film jeanne picking out her wedding gown. whether it's supposed to be the one she would really marry in or just another scene for the movie, i'm not sure.

two very heavily made-up women with very fake red hair dress jeanne up as a bride. they tell her, "the dress makes the bride."

back out on the sidewalk, now in a wedding dress, tom crowds in with the crew. but suddenly, it starts to rain and the crew calls it a day. tom follows them saying he wants to film in the rain.

jeanne decides to run off in the dress. she runs, of course, to paul. he's outside the apartment and they ride up in the elevator together. jeanne asks paul if he still wants her and revealingly pulls up her dress.

when they reach the apartment, paul carries jeanne to bed. but an instant later, he realizes she's soaking wih rain (paul is wearing a coat, so the rain is cold). he announces that she must take a hot bath immediately and goes off to run it.

for a while now, jeanne has been seeing a cat hanging around the apartment (there's no indication that it belongs to paul). she now seeks why! A RAT!

jeanne loses it and paul comes running. he's very amused that it's only a rat and teases jeanne by pretending he wants to eat the rat. he promises to let her have some rat as well.

jeanne is now set on leaving for fear of more rats! or even just the fact there was one rat. paul tells her she absolutely cannot leave until she has a bath. after she's warm and dry, she can go. but he won't have her catching pneumonia.

of course, jeanne dramatically runs to the door and declares she's getting married, etc. but she's trained everyone just to accept this overly dramatic behavior (she runs away a lot from paul, from tom, from her mother). so, paul persists until she agrees she ought to have a bath.

as paul washes jeanne, they chitchat about what she's revealed: she's getting married. at first, paul takes this in stride and asks her a few questions about her fiance. she claims tom is "magnificent" and that they "make love." (not believing that, i've "met" tom. haha)

tbc...

last tango in paris, proximity to truth (pt6)

jeanne is conflicted. she runs from tom. he catches her in the subway (so, more train). one passes by as they smack at each other. tom manages to restrain jeanne and he says he loves her. he wants to marry her.

meanwhile, paul is taken to the room rosa's mother has fixed up for rosa to lay in state. rosa, dressed in white, lays on a lavish bed of purple flowers (the same kind jeanne wore on her hat at the beginning of the movie). the flowers are very fragrant, paul says he can barely breathe.

paul looks at rosa and says she's her mother's creation. she is wearing heavy makeup and false eyelashes (the room is dimly lit, btw). this was not how rosa normally presented herself and paul hates it.

he tells rosa she lied and she knew it. this makes her such a low person, he calls her a "pig fucker." he rails against rosa for a while and catches himself...

he apologizes to her. he uses a flower petal to wipe away her garish lipstick and takes off her false eyelashes.

he tells rosa he loves her. crying he begs her forgiveness....

then there's knock at the door... paul is needed for a guest at the hotel. he meekly goes to see what's the matter.

it's a prostitute who gets rather pissy. she wants to see paul's boss. somewhere along the line, her john gets cold feet and takes off. she insists paul go after him. she says she is rosa's friend.

paul chases the man through the steet. when he catches him, he roughes him up. the man calls paul "insane."

he tells paul his wife has a gross skin condition and he doesn't find her attractive. paul calls him a "faggot."

(btw, the monlogue by rosa's bedside is considered the best ever filmed, it's on youtube)

to be continued...

last tango in paris, proximity to truth (pt 5)

(one thing I forgot to say about paul's childhood. he tells jeanne that his mother's alcoholism got her arrested a lot and, because it was a small, farming community, EVERYONE KNEW.)

jeanne and tom's movie continues....

tom doesn't like jeanne's new look which is much more casual than before.
if you google for images of maria schneider, it's probably going to be the first images to come up... her with curly hair and light (or no) makeup.

"it's my hair!" jeanne tells him, which sounds as if her hair is naturally very curly and she'd been straightening it before.

also, the color is dark brown which appears to be maria schneider's natural color, at least.

so, tom's taste is the more made-up, groomed jeanne. this seems to hold for her appearance in the movie and his personal preference.

he does drop it when she starts to get upset. and, it's important to note, he gives no indication that he wishes to end their relationship based on something so superficial.

for his part, paul says nothing about the change although he mostly sees jeanne wearing little to no clothing because, unlike tom, he doesn't spend time with her as she goes about her life.

tom has some cloyingly romantic scenes for jeanne... it's possible he simply thought her former look would match these scenes better than her current look. these scenes also feature tom, of course.

jeanne goes to visit paul in the apartment. WE know paul has been dealing with his mother-in-law, maurice, etc. jeanne, for her part, is miffed at tom and her mom. so, despite paul's plans... the real world is seeping into their arrangement.

paul is sitting on the floor eating bread and cheese and drinking bottled water. when jeanne arrives, he asks her to get the butter from the refrigerator.

this annoys jeanne because first, he didn't answer when she called him (it's a big apartment) and second, she had a surprise and he's barely paying attention to her. she gets the butter and throws it at him.

she tells him an american eating cheese and drinking water in an apartment isn't interesting. (the french have a more interesting way of doing it? lol)
she's hidden her surprise so, even though she has paul's attention, he doesn't know about it yet.

bored, jeanne starts goofing around with the apartment by knocking on the floor. she finds a hollow place. the carpet above it clearly has been cut out and replaced.
this gets paul's attention. it's a bit hard to describe... he'd been sort of lounging and he looked at her upside down... when he decides to go over to where she is, he does a sort of backflip to a standing position, then joins her on the floor... this is a suggestion that paul is much more athletic than your average middle-aged hotel owner.

he suggests they open the hiding place. jeanne becomes nervous and says they should leave it alone. she doesn't know why... but she knows she doesn't want to open it.

paul indicates her jeans and asks if he can open that? maybe there's gold and jewels inside? it's important to note that both paul and jeanne are fully dressed at this point... this is one of the few times we see them hanging around the apartment wearing clothes...

so, as paul and jeanne continue what seems to be something much like what they usually do... we notice paul is bring the butter closer...

suddenly, paul flips jeanne over on her stomach. "you want to know about family secrets?" he asks.

jeanne, surprised at this strange turn, is struggling. paul holds her down and pulls her pants down. he applies the butter and while he sodomizes her, he has her repeat some very odd things.

jeanne, crying, does her best to comply. unfortunately, I don't know everything he says and jeanne never manages to repeat every word, but it starts with "the church of the good citizen league" and contains lines like "there is nothing but oppression and freedom."

one thing that's widely known now that perhaps wasn't in the 1970s is that sodomy is a big part of initiations into secret societies. so, paul is most likely re-enacting something that happened to him.

maria schneider says this scene wasn't in the original script. she says this scene was a last minute improvisation by marlon brando. he told her not to worry, "it's only a movie." but she says she wishes she'd known to call her agent and protest because she felt "raped."

now, this is very interesting since they both are fully clothed (except her pants get pulled down), and the scene probably has a lot less physical contact than many other scenes. but there is something strange about this scene that has caused it to be probably the most famous sex scene in the movie.

a lot of write-ups about this scene show pictures of jeanne in the bathtub. that is a completely different scene that takes place on a later day (in movie time).

later, after paul wakes up, jeanne is messing about with a record player. this is her surprise: music. she tells him she can't get it to work. he comes over and immediately is shocked by the plug. he knows jeanne did this on purpose and there's some indication that he takes this as her revenge for the butter scene.

the music is something jeanne likes. she immediately disassociates while listening to it (which is a bit weird).

so, the butter scene is now behind them and their relationship seems to enter another phase...

to be continued...

last tango in paris, proximity to truth (pt 2)

from now on, spoiler warning... i'm just going to outright say what happens and what I think it means. personally, I think you could still enjoy the movie, but just in case SPOILERS (somewhere) AHEAD.

when paul suggested meeting again to jeanne, he told her "no names." later, we find he means no names AT ALL. not only does he not wish to know her name, he doesn't want her to use names when she talks about people. of course, one of the first names she uses is "paul". she's talking about her cousin...

bernardo bertolucci wrote the screenplay, but marlon brando ad libbed A LOT. so, I suspect much of what unfolds in any scene with paul (i.e., most of the movie) come from a really different place than what's going on otherwise.

there is some suggestion that marlon brando and maria schneider didn't expect the movie to be the way it wound up being because they both complained about their treatment by bertolucci.

however, marlon brando and bernardo bertolucci did have a friendship by the end of brando's life. bertolucci tells brando he was "in love with him." so, perhaps he tried to maintain control of the movie a bit more harshly than necessary.

also, FIVE actors have every one of their scenes deleted. maybe the movie we see isn't the movie the actors thought they were making?

maria schneider also said she felt "raped" by marlon brando (the butter scene) although she also remained friends with him, she did say there was a time they couldn't discuss the movie. sadly, this movie ruined all associations with butter for poor maria. she cooks with olive oil.

this movie perhaps was a mistake for maria schneider to make. she says she was nothing like jeanne. she does a great job in this movie, but it's not too hard to imagine that everyone just assumed she was a wild slut afterwards.

for his part, marlon brando doesn't stomp all over her lines which... if he wanted to he could have done. but, he plays his part and lets her play hers.

the movie spends some time right about now letting us know about jeanne and her fiance tom. tom is played by french new wave star jean-pierre leaud.

he is finished with his education and is directing the movie he proposed with jeanne. because it's her real life he's also a star. like any reality show, there's all sorts of set up situations.

so when jeanne goes home, tom (and crew) follows her around as he asks her questions about her childhood. she shows him photos, reads an essay, some definitions she copied down (including one for the word "penis"), and takes him outside to see her "jungle." she tells tom how she and her cousin each had their own tree they liked to sit under (we hear more on this later).

tom dramatically sets up shots and directs jeanne with words and gestures. he "regresses" her in age by counting back year by year until he reaches age nine. at first, this seems like another bit of direction by tom, but toward the end of the movie there is another counting scene... counting up to 19.

we meet maria's mother. she's played by gitt magrini and their servant olympia (luce marquand). maria's mother is talking about things she wants to take with her to the country. these include some "military things" (uniform, boots) that belonged to jeanne's father. she says "these military things never age".

jeanne talks about the colonel with his "tall boots and bright blue eyes." she says he died in 58.

there is some feelings around the house that jeanne has been overindulged... by her teacher, by this film project.

nothing about what we see happen between jeanne and tom seems completely real. and nothing makes her seem like she'd go back to the apartment, but she does go back and she goes back not long after the first time.

she arrives to see paul's had some furniture delivered. he gets her to help him move a few things. then she decides to tell him some of the same stories she told tom. only paul questions her until she tells him the truth.

paul learns the teacher who indulged jeanne so much was a lesbian. he learns she and the cousin she liked so much used to play a masturbation game... they'd sit under their trees and see who could reach orgasm first.

when she talks about the colonel, paul says "all military uniforms are a lie." when she says he died in 58, pauls says, "or 68", "or 98." jeanne becomes petulant and insists "58!"

paul talks about his childhood... his parents were alcoholics. his father was "super masculine, bar fighting, whore fucking." paul's chore was to milk a cow. he remembers having to milk it before going to a basketball game and how his shoes stank up the car.

he says they had a black dog named dutchie who ran through a mustard field. he says that was beautiful to see.

then he talks about working for an old farmer who was always sucking on a clay pipe. it was "back breaking work" and he'd make bets with himself how long it'd take the drool to fall off the pipe.

after this paul leaves the room. jeanne is annoyed at the lack of attention from him. she doesn't realize, paul has made himself very sad. while he cries, she masturbates (she doesn't know what he's doing).

it's hard to say if jeanne thinks paul is purposely being annoying. but of course, she doesn't know about rosa.