MOVIE OF THE WEEK March 14, 2025: BEING MARIA
The impact of the male gaze on women in film is a subject that’s been documented and debated for decades. But Jessica Palud’s drama Being Maria viscerally reminds us of just how damaging that gaze can be as it tells the true story of Maria Schneider, the young French actress whose career — and life — were derailed by the men who manipulated her while making the controversial classic Last Tango in Paris.
Based on the 2018 book Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider by Maria’s cousin, Vanessa Schneider, the film first introduces Maria (played with focused intensity by Anamaria Vartolomei), when she’s about 16. She’s building a tenuous connection with her largely absent father, French actor Daniel Gélin (Yvan Attal), after being raised single-handedly by her mother, Marie-Christine (Marie Gillain). Maria enjoys being on Daniel’s film sets and watching him work, so, after a serious argument with her mother leaves her trying to figure out what’s next, she decides to follow in his footsteps and become an actress. And at age 19, she secures the part that will cement her name in movie history.
When director Bernardo Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) decides that she’s the perfect fit for Last Tango in Paris, his drama about a raw, powerful sexual relationship between a young woman and an older man, Maria is flattered and excited, especially when she learns she’ll be starring opposite the legendary Marlon Brando (Matt Dillon). She knows the film will be graphic and is largely prepared for it — until the day Bertolocci and Brando surprise her with the film’s most infamous scene, one in which her character is brutally raped by Brando’s. The experience leaves Maria betrayed and traumatized.
As chronicled in Being Maria, the fallout of that film — that scene — is extremely hard on Maria. Pilloried by the public and left questioning her own agency and ability, she spirals downward, adrift, in pain, and bitter about women’s lack of power in the film industry. Vartolomei’s vulnerable performance makes viewers empathize with her every step of the way, as does Palud and Laurette Polmanss’ spare but impactful screenplay. Palud effectively recreates the world of 1970s French cinema, using her own gaze to prompt audiences to consider some of the era’s heaviest hitters from a new, unflinching perspective.– Betsy Bozdech
Team #MOTW’s comments:
Pam Grady: At 19, Maria Schneider shot to fame via Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris as the woman who has an anonymous, sometimes abusive affair with a widower played by Marlon Brando. The circumstances of the shoot and Schneider’s life before it and in the decade following are the subject of Jessica Palud’s drama, an adaptation of Vanessa Schneider’s book about her cousin. A game Matt Damon plays Brando in Palud’s recreation of the Last Tango shoot, sometimes kind and charming to his young costar. But when the vicious butter rape scene commences, shocking an unprepared Maria (Anamaria Vartolomei), neither he nor director Bernardo Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) even bother to apologize. The film’s enormous success extracts an even bigger price from Maria, the aftereffects of the difficult shoot and the movie’s notoriety leading her down a path to hardcore addiction even as she finds love with Noor (Céleste Brunnquell), a student. Vartolomei is excellent, portraying Maria’s diffidence and lifelong sense of unbalance in drama that gets to the heart of how one role could create so much damage.
Nell Minow: Last Tango in Paris was a sensation when it was released in 1972 because of its explicit depiction of an anonymous sexual relationship between an American man played by Marlon Brando and a young French woman played by teenager Maria Schneider. Today, we may see that film as exemplifying the male gaze in the way in which it objectified a vulnerable young woman and the behind-the-scenes description of the way Schneider was treated by Brando and director Bernard Bertolucci during the filming was exploitative and abusive. In Being Maria, we get a long-overdue look at the filming of Last Tango from her perspective, based on the book by Schneider’s cousin Vanessa Schneider. It is especially affecting because it uses filmmaking, the same tool that created such trauma for her, to take back her agency and reclaim her story.
Leslie Combemale In the scenes relating to Last Tango in Paris, I love how Palud often makes it hard to differentiate between the times Maria and Marlon are being themselves and when they’re being filmed for the camera, supposedly in character. It speaks to just how manipulative the men around Maria were at the time. It’s also quite striking how much she is objectified, treated essentially as a piece of furniture, by the male filmmakers in charge. As Maria put it, “in that scene, I felt like I’d been raped by two men.” Unfortunately, women continue to feel pressured within the context of roles, especially early in their careers. Too little has changed, even given the #MeToo movement, both inside and outside of Hollywood. Of-the-moment performer Anamaria Vartolomei, equally luminous and haunting in this film as she was in Audrey Diwan’s Happening, is the reason to stick with this biopic, which sometimes follows a well-worn path. I was certainly grateful that Being Maria is told through a feminine lens. I couldn’t have taken the infamous butter scene otherwise.
Jennifer Merin Being Maria is a revealing truth-based biopic about the life and career of actress Maria Schneider, whose star ascended when she was just 19, after her daring performance opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s highly controversial film, Last Tango in Paris (1972). Director Jessica Palud’s compelling telling of the story shows how Schneider’s risqué role and the fame that came with it impacted young Maria’s future relationships and repertoire. This picture is not one of kudos and glam. Read full review.
Sandie Angulo Chen: Sandie Angulo Chen: Jessica Palud’s Being Maria offers a compelling look at actor Maria Schneider’s tumultuous life and career, with Anamaria Vartolomei delivering a powerful central performance. Co-written by Laurette Polmanss, the film chronicles Schneider’s journey from rebellious teen to traumatized star, following Schneider’s breakthrough but painful role in director Bernardo Bertolucci’s infamous Last Tango in Paris. The narrative unfolds through Maria’s perspective, showing how she was manipulated by powerful men in the industry, notably Bertolucci and the legendary Marlon Brando (a fabulous Matt Dillon). The film poignantly highlights how Schneider spoke out about her on-set abuse decades before women in showbiz were believed.
Loren King The biting subtext to writer-director Jessica Palud’s Being Maria is recreating the climate on film sets and within the echo chambers of the film world — press junkets, photo shoots, agent meetings —for a young aspiring actress before the MeToo era. It takes the controversial but much lauded film Last Tango in Paris and recreates the experience from the point of view of Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei), just 19 and in her first major screen role. If we know something now, after lawsuits, news stories, documentaries and narrative films, about the exploitation, coercion and blatant workplace harassment that still rages, unchecked, on film sets, Being Maria shows us what it looked like on a much ballyhooed 1972 Paris shoot, with an all-male crew and absolutely no internal or external support systems. The fallout, not surprisingly, was borne by Schneider alone. Read full review.
Liz Whittemore Ah, the infamous butter scene from Last Tango in Paris. Maria Schneider discussed Hollywood’s power dynamics long before the #MeToo movement and the introduction of intimacy coordinators when she chose to share her experience on the set of the controversial cult classic from 1972. Bertolucci confessed that he wanted Schneider’s reaction as a 19-year-old girl rather than as an actress when he added the scene with Marlon Brando the morning of the shoot without consulting her. The troubling age difference, with Brando at 48, coupled with the weight of his stardom and the film’s violence, makes the situation even more disturbing. Being Maria finally grants Schneider agency over her story. Matt Dillon is fantastic as Brando, but Anamaria Vartolomei is outstanding. She possesses an unmatched, magnetic presence. Director Jessica Palud presents a portrait of a young actress who was betrayed, exploited, and forever changed by an industry that regarded her as a commodity.
Cate Marquis The Maria in Being Maria is Maria Schneider, the French actress who shot to fame in director Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial 1972 film Last Tango in Paris. A mere 19-years-old when she was cast opposite the much older Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider had little idea of what to expect, either during filming and after, when she was picked to co-star in a film about two strangers meeting for anonymous sexual encounters. Bertolucci intended the male fantasy to push boundaries but Last Tango in Paris completely shocked audiences, partly because of the age gap between the middle-aged Brando and his much younger co-star, but particularly because of one especially egregious scene of sexual abusive, which earned the film commendation as pornography. When the controversy blew up, Bertolucci and Brando fled, leaving the inexperienced, young Schneider to deal with that firestorm on her own. The biopic Being Maria tells Maria Schneider’s story, beginning with her difficult childhood, into the harrowing conditions shooting the film and the aftermath, and exploring the devastating impact the film had on her emotionally as well as on her career, in a tense yet ultimately inspiring tale of a woman overcoming, in a time long before the MeToo movement.
FILM DETAILS:
Title: Being Maria
Director: Jessica Palud
Release Date: March 21, 2025
Running Time: 100 minutes
Language: French with English subtitles
Screenwriters: Jessica Palud, Laurette Polmanss, Vanessa Schneider
Lead Performers: Anamaria Vartolomei, Matt Dillon
Distribution Company: Kino Lorber
AWFJ Movie of the Week Panel Members: Sandie Angulo Chen, Betsy Bozdech, Leslie Combemale, Pam Grady, Loren King, Cate Marquis, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Sherin Nicole, Liz Whittemore
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Edited by Jennifer Merin
