My Cousin Maria Schneider by Vanessa Schneider, translated by Molly Ringwald
Author
:
Vanessa Schneider, tr. Molly Ringwald
ISBN-13
:
9781472158574
Publisher
:
Corsair
Guideline Price
:
£10.99
Recounting the press coverage of her cousin Maria Schneider's death (known to most of us as the actor from Last Tango in Paris), Vanessa Schneider writes: 'No one writes about how, when you die, you are sipping champagne, your favourite drink … You leave us amidst bubbles and bursts of laughter, loving faces and smiles – upright with your head held high, a little tipsy. With panache.'
Beside this, in the margin I have written 'the dream'. Not that Maria's life was a dream, but scenes like this show Vanessa's magnificent balance of tone .
There is something distinctly French in this ability to recount injustice and pain without wallowing in it. There's an enviable simplicity of form, reminiscent of a jumbled photograph album, with each section recounting a memory or fact taken (seemingly) at random.
Vanessa's sentences, too, translated by another actor, Molly Ringwald, put me in mind of those of Annie Ernaux, in their all-encompassing brevity. It's almost as if the best French writing is like the best French fashion, each paragraph conveying its message with straightforward elegance. She even pulls off the (usually dangerously insipid) second person, writing directly to 'you', Maria – no mean feat.
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As for Maria herself, it's quickly made clear that the perfect storm of an abusive mother, a manipulatively charismatic father, precocious physical attractiveness, natural talent, a taste for fun and professional mistreatment all led, perhaps inevitably, to addiction.
Yet, although her heroin problem is recounted in graphic detail, it's again without the excess of pathos one might fear from an adoring relative. I felt only admiration when Vanessa writes: 'There are few people who admit to fearing the madness of others and fleeing in the face of it. [He] put into words our family's ambivalence – the rush of relief, and the attendant shame we feel when we don't hear from you.'
All in all, this is a timely recounting of the toxic misogyny that existed in filmmaking in the 1970s, contained within a candid yet loving celebration of an actor who was offered up as one of its many female sacrifices. Yet, despite the numerous harrowing events of her life, one comes away from these pages admiring rather than pitying Maria. A quiet triumph.
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