At 19, Maria catches the eye of Bernardo Bertolucci (Hugo Becker). After The Conformist, with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli, the Italian filmmaker is preparing to shoot his next film in Paris, with Marlon Brando (Matt Dillon) in the lead role. Nudity does not scare the young actress, who is delighted to film with the Hollywood myth…
The other side of “Last Tango in Paris”
For his second feature film (after To come backnoticed at the Venice Film Festival and presented at the closing of the Fiff in 2019), the Frenchwoman Jessica Palud adapts Your name was Maria Schneider by Vanessa Schneider. In this novel, published in 2018 by Grasset, the actress’ cousin looked back on the chaotic journey of Maria Schneider, forever marked by the filming of Last Tango in Paris.
“The Dreamers”: May 68 in the bedroom
If Bertolucci’s film caused a scandal when it was released – it was banned for a long time in Italy – it was in particular because of its famous rape scene, where Brando uses butter as a lubricant. If the scene seems so harsh, so realistic, it is because it had not been prepared and because the tears of Maria Schneider, taken as a traitor by the director and his actor, were very real…
A word that was inaudible at the time
Presented in the Cannes Première section on the Croisette in May 2024, Maria obviously depicts the circumstances of this sexual assault, recreating numerous scenes from the Last Tango. But he also returns to the psychological consequences on the rest of the life and career of Maria Schneider, who fell into heroin addiction. Less strong, this second part (where we meet the young Céleste Brunnquell, still appearing in Her Father’s Daughter) nevertheless allows us to recall that Schneider openly spoke about this rape to journalists at the time, but that she was never heard…
Bertolucci: “Young people are not condemned…”
Daughter of Hervé Palud (director of cult comedies The Professional Secrets of Doctor Apfelglück in 1991 and An Indian in the city in 1994), Jessica Palud has been immersed in the world of cinema since her childhood. She took her first steps as an assistant in 2003 on the set of The Dreamers by… Bernardo Bertolucci. If the director knew the filmmaker, she is not any more tender towards him. On the contrary, she condemns him even more than Brando, by showing the way in which, in the name of his art and his search for truth, he destroyed a young actress on the rise. Which is played by the magnetic Anamaria Vartolomei (discovered in The Event by Audrey Diwan, Golden Lion 2021), facing a very sober and very fair Matt Dillon in the role of Brando, the idol of his youth…
Maria Drama Of Jessica Palud Scenario Jessica Palud and Laurette Polmanss (after Your name was Maria Schneider by Vanessa Schneider) Photography Sébastien Buchmann Music Benjamin Biolay Assembly Thomas Marchand With Anamaria Vartolomei, Matt Dillon, Hugo Becker, Marie Gillain, Yvan Attal, Céleste Brunnquell, Stanislas Mehrar… Duration 1h42
