Last Mistress, The
Last Mistress, The
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Synopsis

Catherine Breillat has a reputation for making sexually explicit films about female desire, but the results are always more provocative than tantalizing. The Last Mistress is no different, but it's the first instance of Breillat taking her "New French Extremity" roots and planting them in France's loftiest of film genres: the "Heritage Film." Adapting Jules-Amedee Barbey d'Aurevilly's 1851 novel about an experienced courtesan, Breillat casts cinematic bad girl Asia Argento as La Vellini, who has a stormy affair with a younger Parisian nobleman, Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou, just as pretty as Argento). Their destructive romance is shown in flashback, when the libertine Ryno is forced to confess his carnal sins on the eve of his marriage to a wealthier, safer girl (Roxane Mesquida). If you like period costumes, lots of skin, and extreme emotions, this is your jam. If you thought Argento injected some much-needed flesh and blood into Marie Antoinette the year before, then this is the spinoff. "It's terribly French. It's also gloriously unpredictable" (The New York Times). Nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. In French with English subtitles.

Catherine Breillat---France---2007---104 mins.

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  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
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   | Clark#1

Catherine Breillat' 2007 film "The Last Mistress" (Une Vielle Maitresse), along with being a very sensual examination of obsessive love, is a study in economics of film making. There are some scenes where there are only two characters speaking , but you still feel a whole encompassing world around the characters. Asia Argento as the openly free woman Vellini expresses her freedom in the most sensual of ways. In fact, one of the characters, in describing her to her future lover Ryno, says there is something "moorish" about her , in describing her being the offspring of a Spanish matador and a high class lady in Castille. That description of her changes Ryno's mind about her, because he initially tells his friend he thinks Vellini "an ugly mutt", a decidedly arrogant appraisel. Hers is a freedom of willful sexual liaisons, moody moments, and behavior stemming from the fact that she is an overt "outsider". I think now I would love to read the novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly just to see how the character of La Vellini is described. I gave it 5 stars also because of the emotional honesty of the film.

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