A memoir and tribute to Maria Schneider, the 1970s movie starlet who catapulted to fame in the controversial film Last Tango in Paris—only to live the rest of her life plagued by scandal—as told from the perspective of her adoring younger cousin.
A slender memoir composed in second person, directly addressed to the actress and elegantly translated from the French by Molly Ringwald ... This memoir is written with a rare sense of intimacy and devotion. It warmly captures the highlights of Maria Schneider’s life ... Unsparing ... In this post-#MeToo era, Vanessa Schneider’s evenhanded portrayal of this daring actress of the 1970s is a refreshing one. For once, a young woman is not placed on an impossibly high pedestal, where she is unfairly worshiped for her beauty and then cruelly defiled for our entertainment. Instead, Maria Schneider is presented with both her faults and her charms. In that way, this is a generous account of a rare and complicated cinematic star.
Hazy ... Translated by actress Ringwald, this is an intriguing addition to the growing body of literature reexamining women’s agency through a post-#MeToo lens.
