Me being me, my early life ebbing birthday present to myself was to stream Last Tango in Paris, and already knowing so much about it in advance, was more or less diminished by Bertolucci's Truffaut affect, the meta dramatic technique of film within a film. There was an obvious homage to the older French director in Leaud's staginess as an intrepid enthusiast of capture, but shock, awe? Hardly. By today's standards, Schneidner's nascent coyness, coupled with that baby doll face, and Brando's shrewd magnetism, suggested more interesting motifs than Marie's body served in a candy dish. Method acting had engraved itself onto Brando by this point, encasing his defenses, locking away anything raw, except for the impetuosity of his violence, and curious compassion for Girotti's Marcel. Other than that, his performance was a tease, as in so much of his later work. Perhaps he let himself go after the butter scene, because this took what was left, so he exchanged keeping himself in shape for the effortless sating through eating well and over nourishing. Never really my type, I can still see, however, why women like Jeanne would succumb to his domineering ferocity in lieu of true loving congruence. Youth desires penetration of invulnerable pretenses, even if pivotal monologues do not quite penetrate inflammatory deafness, the constant companion to ringing ears.
I still have time to run sections of the film again, review his weaving leg and what he was smirking to this poor girl, before he toyed with the small wind instrument, before this woman who decided to blame a simulated violation for the rest of her *ruined* life. Actors. What we put up with for aesthetics, inclusive of sudden democratic government totalitarianism for a hard look at power shifts between the sexes. As a woman myself, one whose contorted skeleton would be naked exploitation of a different texture, if substituted in the bathroom scene with Schneider's odd bush, with gradations like an inverted pyramid, I can attest that adventurism can lead to histrionic regret, but like so many doomed artists, even David Foster Wallace, my episodes of being chained to a spurious colon begins to give way to defeat: If I once believed myself matriculated, once made love to ambulatory men, now my grandfather's gastrointestinal turbulence is a psychological erosion of self worth. Rainy days are a bitch, elongated lung creping like a failed exercise in origami folding. Not a particularly good day person, I have been dragging since I woke. Maybe I'll rent it again later, or eat my usage last minute to recapture. Saturated as I am, near 60, with the best of the best, masterpieces, classics, believing I could have done better, myself, had I made better choices, I am glad of Bertolucci's tyranny in pursuit of this vision. Is Last Tango a great movie? I'd say intriguing, particularly with its interior strategies. We'd be a better species if we were this brave for the sake of creativity most of the time. Maybe I'll find a way to stop getting weaker and sicker, and get out, somehow, return to limited functionality; maybe I'll rationalize that atheists are wrong, that spirits retain identity, and that I can join Wallace in doomed ego limbo, or lose and die in Philadelphia's excuse for a wheelchair community. None of you know what to say. It is not one or two bad experiences which lead me to defy Medicaid Waiver services. Nine years have taught me that attendant care here at the bottom is legalized pimping; it does not change the fact my legs are going, my rectum is ready made greenhouse topsoil. After all the trauma I lived, my fail year has dawned, and I am, in all probability, telling Gail Sims, the newest assistant manager, that I'm not recertifying. I am also probably not going to find a pro bono champion between then and the initiation of eviction proceedings.
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