While apartment hunting, a middle aged American expat (Marlon Brando) overcome by his wife's suicide meets a young Parisian girl (Maria Schneider) engaged to a witless dolt (Jean-Pierre Leaud), and the two agree to meet again and make a fleeting arrangement based on anonymous, demeaning, and ultimately revealing sex. Bertolucci's controversial and regarded Last Tango in Paris is on one hand an exercise in pretentiousness and crudity while on another a masterfully filmed, complex character study containing what may be the finest, most personal performance of Brando's career.
*** 1/2 out of ****
