Why ‘Last Tango in Paris’ Derailed Maria Schneider’s Life

In a 1983 interview for a French television show, the actress Maria Schneider was asked whether she would mind if the program broadcast a clip from “Last Tango in Paris,” a film she had made 11 years earlier. “No,” she said, pleadingly. “I’d rather not.”

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, that movie depicts the heated sexual relationship between a young Frenchwoman, Jeanne (Schneider), and an older American expat, Paul (Marlon Brando). What ended up making “Tango” more infamous than famous was a scene in which Paul forces himself on Jeanne, with the help of a smear of butter.

That scene would haunt Schneider, who died at 58 in 2011, the rest of her life. In a 2007 interview, she said that the moment had been sprung upon her with no warning: “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.”

It’s easy to see why this posed a moral and ethical problem for the director Jessica Palud, whose new film, “Being Maria,” stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider and Matt Dillon as Brando.

“That was the big question mark when we started writing our film: Do we re-enact the scene or not?” Palud said in a video interview from France. “Everybody I talked to who had known Maria mentioned the trauma caused by that scene, so I just couldn’t avoid it.”

“Being Maria” starts with Schneider observing her father, the well-known French actor Daniel Gélin (Yvan Attal) on a set. She is fascinated by the world of filmmaking, and right away we are conscious of the importance of who is watching and who is being watched. When, not long after, the 19-year-old Maria is cast in “Tango” and becomes the focus of attention, Palud felt it was important to continue to concentrate on the woman’s gaze.