The Plot: A young Parisian (Maria Schneider) meets an older American man (Marlon Brando) at a flat viewing. They begin an intense affair, based solely on highly-charged sex and clandestine anonymity. The Subtext: Brando's Paul is a manifestation of Brando the man, and the actor is basically playing himself for the only time in his career. Originally intended to be a mirror of director Bernardo Bertolucci, the character Paul became, after weeks of revelatory, private discussion between Brando and his director, instead a mirror of Brando himself, the actor given free-reign to write and improvise his own lines, thus beginning the creation of one of cinema's most personal performances ever. From scenes where Paul describes his alcoholic mother and neglecting father, to the moment where Brando stands silent in the room where his wife has recently committed suicide (an eerie foreboding as years later his ex-wife and son would both die by their own hand) and listens to a maid describe his life - "...became an actor, bongo player, revolutionary in South America, journalist in Japan, one day he lands in Tahiti, hangs around, learns French. Then he went to Paris. There he meets a woman with money and marries her..." - nearly every aspect of Brando in Last Tango is ripped from Brando in real life. Once you begin to realise this, the film becomes something else entirely; no longer just a stark and sexual picture about a doomed relationship, but also a complex, emotional, ultimately painful dissection of the most troubled-yet-brilliant actor of his generation.
