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In a 1983 interview for a French television show<\/a>, the actress Maria Schneider was asked whether she would mind if the program broadcast a clip from \u201cLast Tango in Paris,\u201d a film she had made 11 years earlier. \u201cNo,\u201d she said, pleadingly. \u201cI\u2019d rather not.\u201d<\/p>\n Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, that movie depicts the heated sexual relationship between a young Frenchwoman, Jeanne (Schneider), and an older American expat, Paul (Marlon Brando). What ended up making \u201cTango\u201d more infamous than famous was a scene in which Paul forces himself on Jeanne, with the help of a smear of butter.<\/p>\n That scene would haunt Schneider, who died at 58 in 2011<\/a>, the rest of her life. In a 2007 interview<\/a>, she said that the moment had been sprung upon her with no warning: \u201cI felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see why this posed a moral and ethical problem for the director Jessica Palud, whose new film, \u201cBeing Maria,\u201d stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider and Matt Dillon as Brando.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThat was the big question mark when we started writing our film: Do we re-enact the scene or not?\u201d Palud said in a video interview from France. \u201cEverybody I talked to who had known Maria mentioned the trauma caused by that scene, so I just couldn\u2019t avoid it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeing Maria\u201d starts with Schneider observing her father, the well-known French actor Daniel G\u00e9lin (Yvan Attal) on a set. She is fascinated by the world of filmmaking, and right away we are conscious of the importance of who is watching and who is being watched. When, not long after, the 19-year-old Maria is cast in \u201cTango\u201d and becomes the focus of attention, Palud felt it was important to continue to concentrate on the woman\u2019s gaze.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to reproduce Bertolucci\u2019s camera \u2014 it\u2019s not a remake of \u2018Tango\u2019 \u2014 so I tried to change the scene\u2019s point of view and do it from her perspective,\u201d the director said. \u201cSo we see her watching the crew, and the crew watching her. Her \u2018no\u2019 and her tears are real, she isn\u2019t acting anymore. We see the entire crew just waiting for the director to say \u2018cut.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Palud (who got into the film industry as a 19-year-old intern on Bertolucci\u2019s \u201cThe Dreamers\u201d some two decades ago) had secured the original \u201cTango\u201d screenplay from the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise archives. She could see for herself that the notorious scene was not in it, confirming Schneider\u2019s version. Naturally, work proceeded very differently on the \u201cBeing Maria\u201d shoot, which involved an intimacy coordinator, but the filming was still harrowing for Vartolomei.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop crying that day \u2014 I think I had completely internalized Maria\u2019s anger, the violence of that scene,\u201d the actress said in a video chat. \u201cSometimes you tell yourself, \u2018Come on, you\u2019d be trying to fight him off.\u2019 But you can\u2019t, it\u2019s a man twice your size and the violence is such that you feel completely alone. That\u2019s when I understood where Maria\u2019s sorrow came from: loneliness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was so shy that she could close herself off and had an inaccessible side,\u201d Vartolomei added. \u201cShe was really mysterious. That\u2019s why we rehearsed a lot \u2014 we were trying to find her. I struggled grasping her and even having portrayed her, she remains somewhat mysterious to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n Dillon, reached by phone, was open in his admiration for Brando, who meant a great deal to him as an actor, and he did like \u201cTango\u201d as a film. But he also acknowledged that something had gone very wrong. \u201cHaving started acting at a very young age, I\u2019m very sensitive to the exploitation thing,\u201d Dillon said. \u201cSo I had these kind of strange, paradoxical feelings going on.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cTango\u201d episode is a relatively small part of \u201cBeing Maria,\u201d but it is clearly pivotal, as it is in the book that inspired the film, \u201cMy Cousin Maria Schneider.\u201d<\/a> In it, the journalist Vanessa Schneider offers an intimate take on an older family member whom she saw regularly while growing up and greatly admired. The book, delicately and affectionately, traces a tragic arc from Maria Schneider\u2019s childhood with a father who only started connecting with her when she was in her teens, through her attempts to shake off \u201cTango,\u201d her descent into heroin addiction and her efforts to find herself as an actress and as a woman.<\/p>\n \u201cShe suffered from what happened on the set and then from what happened when the movie came out,\u201d Vanessa Schneider said via video from France. \u201cFor puritanical viewers, she was an easy woman who made pornography. It was brutal for her, especially since it wasn\u2019t at all in her nature \u2014 she was pretty modest, reserved and fairly conservative in certain respects.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After \u201cTango,\u201d she turned down most scripts involving nudity, her cousin said. \u201cThis created a reputation as someone who was difficult to work with,\u201d Vanessa Schneider added. \u201cThen drugs came into the picture and she got this reputation in the industry as someone who wasn\u2019t reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Schneider\u2019s own favorite among her films was the Michelangelo Antonioni drama \u201cThe Passenger\u201d<\/a> (1975), in which she was magnetic opposite another American star, Jack Nicholson. The New York Times\u2019s Manohla Dargis called it Antonioni\u2019s \u201cgreatest film\u201d<\/a> when it was rereleased in 2005. Whenever an interview would steer her toward \u201cTango,\u201d Maria Schneider often offered to talk about \u201cThe Passenger\u201d instead. Mainly she landed supporting parts, most notably in the 1979 drama \u201cLa D\u00e9robade\u201d (\u201cMemoirs of a French Whore\u201d in the United States), for which she was nominated for a C\u00e9sar Award (the French equivalent of an Oscar).<\/p>\n Over the decades, a certain mystique has developed around the actress. \u201cIt\u2019s a combination of things,\u201d Vanessa Schneider said. \u201cTango\u201d was \u201cincredibly successful around the world. Entire generations saw it. Maria also had a strong personality, she was charismatic and had an impact on a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey may not have seen many of her movies,\u201d she continued, \u201cbut for a generation she was emblematic thanks to her look, her voice, the way she expressed herself \u2014 you could tell she was outside the norm.\u201d<\/p>\n Schneider\u2019s reputation has also been restored thanks to the rediscovery of the directness with which she discussed the manipulations and violations filmmaking can involve, long before #MeToo and cases like the prosecution in the French courts of the director Christophe Ruggia<\/a>, who was convicted in February of sexually assaulting the actress Ad\u00e8le Haenel, who was a minor at the time.<\/p>\n Commenting on the reaction to her film, Palud said, \u201cMany interviewers in France were telling me, \u2018It\u2019s wild, it sounds like something you\u2019d hear in 2024.\u2019\u201d But, she noted, \u201cmost of the words in the film are Maria\u2019s. It\u2019s what she said in the 1970s and \u201980s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This may explain why Schneider seems to be in the zeitgeist. The director Elisabeth Subrin made the C\u00e9sar-winning short \u201cMaria Schneider, 1983\u201d<\/a> (2022), in which three actresses re-enact the TV interview from that year. Last year, feminist groups and individuals asked the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que to provide context around a planned screening of \u201cTango,\u201d which ended up being canceled altogether. And in January, the Parisian one-woman show \u201cAlone Like Maria\u201d drew parallels between the experience of its star, Marilou Aussilloux, and that of Schneider. The late actress is casting a long shadow.<\/p>\n Palud\u2019s film doesn\u2019t cover Schneider\u2019s childhood or years of illness. \u201cI wanted to end on a strong image,\u201d the director explained, with Maria looking at the camera, saying that she\u2019s listening to us (\u201cJe vous \u00e9coute\u201d), and, in effect, encouraging us to speak. There was something \u201calmost political\u201d about the scene, Palud added. \u201cMy movie is like a report, unadorned: What do we do with this?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n