February 1, 2023
The 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, has a contentious place in film history for its explicit rape scene. While films now often use intimacy coordinators to shoot scenes with sex, back then there was no such support. During the filming, lead actress Maria Schneider was 19. In this striking biography--written in present tense--the author, a journalist who is Schneider's cousin, details Maria's struggles before, during, and after filming Last Tango in Paris. The scene wasn't in the original script, and the actress learned of it only just before filming. She had no idea that since the scene was unscripted, she was entitled to refuse to do it. Bertolucci later apologized, but the damage was lasting. Maria struggled throughout her life to overcome her participation in the film. Depression and addiction followed, and she died in 2011 at age 58. Despite this, the author is adamant that her cousin was much more than that film; she fought hard much of her life to make the industry more respectful of women. VERDICT A terrific translation by fellow actress Ringwald makes this concise, harrowing book a powerful read.--Penelope J.M. Klein
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February 27, 2023
Novelist and journalist Schneider (Do Not Go Crazy) pays tribute to her cousin, late French actor Maria Schneider, in this poignant memoir. Before Maria died of cancer at 58, she concluded she’d “had a happy life,” dumbfounding her cousin, who witnessed her immense troubles firsthand. For much of this slim volume, Schneider recounts that pain: as a young child, she walked in on Maria shooting heroin, and characterizes Maria’s upbringing as “a child who grew up invisible to the very people whose affection needed most.” She also reflects on Maria’s infamous sex scene opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, which came to be widely viewed as “cinematic rape.” (Referring to director Bernardo Bertolucci’s defense of the controversial sequence, Schneider writes, “To him, you were merely collateral damage.”) There’s brightness, though, too, as when Schneider recounts Maria’s stints as a muse for artists including photographer Nan Goldin, singer Patti Smith, and fellow actor Brigitte Bardot, who paid for Maria’s funeral. Schneider writes dispassionately though not without affection, providing a blunt perspective on her complicated relationship with her cousin, a woman haunted by addiction and exploitation who sipped champagne until the end. The result is a bittersweet and gritty salute to a misunderstood screen legend. Agent: Heidi Warneke, Grasset.
March 1, 2023
French journalist and novelist Schneider opens this hazy memoir on her cousin Maria's deathbed in 2011 and more than once expresses certainty that Maria, to whom the entire book is addressed, wouldn't like the story the author's telling now. It's clear from the start that Schneider couldn't have finished it while the actress, known best for her role in Last Tango in Paris (1972), was still alive. In their ""family where madness and unhappiness are never far away,"" Schneider grew up fascinated by her older cousin, keeping every article about her in a now-lost red folder. As Schneider spirals through time and her cousin's life, often looking at past events as her adult journalist self, the source of Maria's tragedy--her unhappiness, addiction to heroin, and ultimately under-realized career--is clear to the author: the infamous, unscripted rape scene in Last Tango that 18-year-old Maria was subjected to, without her consent, alongside the decades-older Marlon Brando. Cruel treatment by the press and casting directors swiftly followed. Translated by actress Ringwald, this is an intriguing addition to the growing body of literature reexamining women's agency through a post-#MeToo lens.
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Starred review from March 1, 2023
A touching tribute to an overlooked French actor. Maria Schneider (1952-2011) was far more than the actor known for her explicit sex scenes with Marlon Brando in the controversial Last Tango in Paris, though few were interested in anything else. Her younger cousin, Vanessa, will change that with this powerful remembrance of their time together. Vanessa, a novelist, reporter, and commentator on French politics, writes this memoir like a love letter, addressing her famous cousin as "You," recalling the stories about Maria that she witnessed or were told to her. Their stories were intertwined even before Vanessa was born, since it was her birth that forced Maria, then 16, to stop staying with Vanessa's parents after her mother forced her to move out of their house. Though Vanessa initially worshipped her famous cousin and the often glamorous life she led at an early age, thanks to her father, French actor Daniel G�lin, she began to see how fame hurt Maria, especially after the release of Last Tango in Paris, for which she felt victimized by the film's director, Bernardo Bertolucci. Vanessa chronicles this fascinating story in often affectionate yet unflinching language, a quality that carries through in Ringwald's spare, poignant translation from French. "I often worry that you won't approve of the story I'm telling, Maria," Vanessa writes. "You won't like that I'm speaking of the drugs, of your mother and father and brothers. So, I erase what I just wrote, and then I write it again, because talking about you without talking about the drugs, your mother, your father, or Tango would mean giving up talking about you at all." Maria Schneider, with all her adventures and struggles, deserves to be better remembered, and her cousin shows us why. This stunning tale of Maria Schneider and her battles is stark yet consistently loving--and unforgettable.
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