Being Maria (2024)

A young 19 year old actress (Anamaria Vartoloemi) gets her huge break when she's selected by master film maker Bernardo Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) to play the female lead in his new film opposite Marlon Brando (Matt Dillon). The film, LAST TANGO IN PARIS, will haunt her the rest of her life. Loosely based on the non fiction book MY COUSIN MARIA SCHNEIDER by Vanessa Schneider and directed by Jessica Palud (BACK HOME). An uneven and unconvincing look at Schneider's life after being traumatized by a sex scene she was forced to perform in LAST TANGO. At 19, she was too inexperienced an actress to refuse to film the scene and perhaps Bertolucci counted on that but all of a sudden, she's picking up men in bars and shooting up heroin. There are indications that she was unstable prior to TANGO thanks to being born out of wedlock to a cold bitch of a mother (Marie Gillain) and a famous father (Yves Attal) who refused to acknowledge her as his daughter until she was 16.Vartoloemi is excellent as Schneider. In fact, in her scenes reenacting LAST TANGO, she's better than Schneider was. As Brando, Dillon isn't so lucky. Nothing in his performances suggests Brando at all. With Jonathan Couzinie and Stanislaus Merhar.