In some films, casting is all. At the scripting stage, Last Tango must
have looked like a sexed-up Bergman film, but with Brando on board this
had to change. The movie became a battle between two icons of cinema for
the body and soul of Maria Schneider. Leaud, playing a new wave goon, is
immature and trapped in a film fantasy; Marlon, a superannuated Henry
Miller figure, is a wreck. Or maybe Marlon is Seberg and Schneider is
Belmondo. Think it through. Po-mo japes notwithstanding, the film's
interesting, fractured visuals fail to make up for its shabby
abandonment of Schneider.
