Tango

Thanks for your review of "Last Tango in Paris", the second I've read this year.

I don't agree that Jeanne's closing lines are pure B-grade thriller though they might be reminiscent of a pure B-grade thriller (whatever that is—something exceptional to be, so pure!). What they communicated to me was Jeanne's privileged position in society and how with Paul's death the door into a different and daring world had snapped shut, leacing her alone in her "niveau" of isolation, wealth, manners and boredom. Also, knowledge of her access to a gun was a necessary device to the plot's unfolding, rather, it seems to me, than reminiscent of a Hollywood of French New Wave thriller.

I absolutely agree that "Last Tango" is not erotic. It is completely engrossing. One's faze is riveted to the screen and during the showing come those odd moments of an almost alien sense of self-awareness. When the house light come back on at the films end and one walks around the streets again reality seems very strange, not from a sense of fantasy Just seen, but form the intensity of the film.

I conclude that the film is "great" whatever that means these days. (Perhaps not knowing, how can I judge?) What I would say then is that the impression this film creates is such that if one had to bet a sizeable sum it would be one of greats of fifty years on, then one would not be throwing sway ones money. All of which should make Bertolucci happy, though I don't think he reads Salient; since every artist (artist underlined), aims at making something great, something lasting, sometime.