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Last Tango in Paris (1973)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Metro Golden Myre (MGM)

Marlon Barndo, Maria Schneider

Last Tango in Paris: The Theatre of the Hysteric? (A Review)

After humanity entered the condition called post-modernity where there is no certainty in human

relationships, what man experiences today is a pure psychological rupture. The present turmoil in

the life-world mostly insists individuals to embrace death as a mode of escapism. The emotional

collapse in the personal lives, detachments, disappointments and the resulted depression and

anxiety inevitably force us to go to certain extremes since the solution is not within our reach.

On the other hand, if someone desires a radical death today, it can be chosen in many different

ways ranging from a traditional method of hanging or poisoning to an ‘aesthetic’ postmodern

method of chemical injection of an anesthetic drug or even ecstasy oriented overdose. In this

inhuman commoditization where anything is globally available in the open market to be

purchased, a man can even hire (purchase) a woman to drive him to a systematic, prolonged and

programmed death while consuming her body in the meantime completing forgetting the arriving

death. He can follow the ‘pleasure principle’ in discovering the ‘impossible’ in her body or move

from her to another to taste different physical contours. If you need ‘hardcore pleasure’, you can

go to an experienced and lethal prostitute, or if you need ‘tenderness’, you can fly to Thailand (or

any other ‘unpolluted’ oriental country) and start a new life such as a living together. For

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example, we can see some middle aged men in the advanced industrial nations come to countries

such as Thailand or even Sri Lanka to spend the rest of their life in the above said manner.

Though the primary purpose of death is never communicated between the subjects , both partners

know the unconscious desire that founds the tie. The best filmic example for this is Leaving Las

Vegas where Ben knows that he is dying and there is no way back, while Anne gradually and

unconsciously eases him from the burden of life on the pretence of saving him from alcoholism.

She always asks Ben to stop drinking but does not do anything significant to decisively stop it.

This can be called in Braudillardian way, ‘seduction’ where ‘the truth’ about why you relate to

the other is permanently hidden. She subtly helps him to go through the remaining small span of

life until his meeting of radical suicide.

The controversial 1973 drama Last Tango in Paris takes a similar turn with regard to the

subject’s encounter of the unapologetic radical death. Their union (the un-meeting) takes the

form of an absurdist, postmodern tragedy since the relationship is devoid of romantic courtly

love (or communication based ‘understanding’ of each other). Paul meets Jeanne in an apartment

after his wife’s departure (a suicide) and proceeds to an anonymous sexual encounter. In the

intense sexual act in the apartment, they do not share any personal information about each

other’s past, or at least their names. One day, Paul leaves the apartment for an unknown reason

but later he reveals to Jeanne that he wants to renew the affair. It seems that Paul has met the

Real, his fundamental fantasy about woman (a strong woman with wild sexual desires) through

Jeanne and loses his symbolic identification (that is why they start the ‘no name game’) with the

external reality (hence, similar to Leaving Las Vegas, death is what he is also desiring). Their

rejection of identification with history leads us to believe that they are hysterics (According to

Zizek, hysteria is the subject’s way of resisting the prevailing, historically specified form of

interpellation or symbolic identification- For They Know not What They Do, p. 100-1). However,

the best movie to illustrate the mobility from anonymous love to symbolic identification is The

Sleeping Dictionary or The Silent American.

Then he meets her again on the street and reveals his past, and they eventually go to the Tango

bar. Once the story (or the past) is revealed, Jeanne comes to know about the nature of the

relationship and she is unable to continue the hysteric theatre with her anonymous ‘lover’

anymore. She shows symptoms of permanently unable to enter a symbolic relationship with

somebody because such symbolic identification would threaten her ‘speculative identity’. Hence,

she stresses that she does not want to see him anymore. But, by that time, Paul (by revealing his

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identity and past) has entered into a symbolic relationship (let’s say love) with her. May be, he

too wanted to be anonymous during his traumatic stage of his wife’s death but through her body

he has recovered from the shock and now needs to re-establish himself in the symbolic order.

But this is not what Jeanne wants now. She wants to run away from him vehemently rejecting

identification. So, a fundamental Zizekian mis-recognition can be evidenced here as in case

between the Tramp and the flower girl in City Lights (she was expecting a handsome gentleman

during her blindness but in reality it is the Tramp). Paul cannot lose Jeanne now and tells that he

loves her. He wants to know her name (symbolic universe).

She reveals ‘her name’ (identity) and then shoots him conveying the viewers that she is deadly

and poisonous in her real existence. The final scene is almost theatrical as she rehearses a kind of

‘dramatization’ for Police interrogations about this murder. The message she delivers is her true

identity is always mortal and brings only ‘death’ (femme fatale) to whoever ‘loves’ her. She is

unable to enter an Oedipus universe and denies all ‘human’ attachments. She distances herself

from ‘words’ and gives only ‘her body to his deadlock, to the kernel that he is unable to put in

words, by means of a hysterical symptom’ (Zizek). She does not want human language since her

weapon is ‘body language’ where impeded desire converts into a ‘desire not to know’ (p.144)

rather than ‘don’t know what we really want’. She does not make your desire ‘unsatisfied’ but

she, like a parasite, lives by your desire for ignorance. Through negation she invents not an

empty nothingness but a positive existence.

Mahesh Hapugoda

Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka

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(This is part of an on-going feature article on Last Tango in Paris and the full paper will soon

follow)