The Last Mistress (2007)

Fresh and Exciting

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Well, I've just started watching this and at the very least it seems like a good way to brush up on my French. Definitely worth a look-- though less than a half hour into it it some technical things struck me. For one thing, Fu'ad Ait Aattou-- he looks about 18! ...though I find that he was in fact pushing 27 when this was made. I just couldn't quite buy him as someone who'd been grown up enough to have had a mistress for ten years; he seems too much of a kid. And Roxane Mesquia, who plays the winsome young bride Hermangarde, doesn't look like a blonde; she looks like the bleached brunette she became for the role. Maybe it's just the color on my old TV... The lighting takes away from the period credibility, though this is a common enough feature of films set in what were dimly-lit times: rooms are brightly and evenly lit to accommodate the camera. The lighting and camera folks could take some pointers from the miniseries "Cranford", which stunningly evoked the look and feel of a shadowy 19th century candlelit indoor world. In "Mistress" the characters are shown in comfortably lit sets when it's supposedly dark out, and you find yourself wondering why they have candles burning when their light is plainly not needed and is in fact hardly visible.None of this, of course, addresses the quality of the film as a whole, and I'll resume commenting after having viewed the rest of it.

The Last Mistress, a film by Catherine Breillat, director of the hot-n-sexy (and probably X-rated if released in the 1970s) Romance, deals with the torn and frayed and wretched relationship between Vellini (Asia Argento), and Ryno de Marigny (first timer Fu'ad Ait Aattou), and how Ryno's mistress threatens his marriage to Hermandarde (Roxane Mesquida), granddaughter of a tough but very fair and reasonable old matriarch. Breillat's direction of the story, which is mostly told in flashback as the grandmother of her soon-to-be-grandson-in-law tells all about his very turbulent bond with Vellini, is sometimes a little dull and stodgy, and it drags in spots that it really should pick up in high gear.But damn it all if it's not some absorbing times in the midst of a classic period setting among character we can relish in. Granted, Breillat likely cast Aattou for constantly having a 'sexy-man' look (somewhat akin, if you ask me, of a young Mick Jagger with ridiculously striking eyes and big lips). Argento, on the other hand, is cast perfectly, and for every bit that Aatou and Mesquida don't quite connect as husband and wife it's made up for by the total, hot connection between the real two leads. Argento is right at home with this twisted, damaged but alive and easily emotional creature, who has that tendency in French melodramas for tragedy at any moment just to get a rise. But she's also tender in surprising moments, and lets her soul bare completely in rough sex scenes (the craziest set in the desert following a very sudden death of a character), which par for Breillat are go-for-broke.What the film may lack in really being a fully "modern" work- it feels like a lot of it is so stuck in the period novel setting that it's locked away, which maybe was the right choice- it's made up for by the stars' appeal and the drive of the torrid love affair that just won't go away. It's appealing, boring, and highly charged in equal measure.

Catherine Breillat's latest film showed up on IFC in theaters and I figured I'd try it since I saw a couple of good but not great reviews.Set in 1835 the plot has a young man, who has been having a long term affair with an older woman, having his life and wedding plans upset by his mistress who just won't get over him. Whats worse is he can't get over her and thanks to two gossips (who take a holier than thou road, while privately taking great glee in destroying lives) everyone is talking about it.More accessible Breillet film was for me nothing special. The problem for me was that once you realized that neither of the lovers was going to give up the affair there really was nowhere to go. Basically you have two people who love and hate each other and really can't leave the other even though its the only sensible thing to do. Realistic to be certain but the film kind of has no where to go and by the end of its running time your ready to move on to something else.Sixish out of ten.

Although I've seen several of them now, I still don't know if I actually LIKE Catherine Breillat films. Her films are a strange contradiction: On one hand, they contain a lot of pretty graphic sex and always feature some of the most attractive actresses in Europe (and this one with Asia Argento and Roxanne Mesquia is certainly no exception). On the other though, they are often very depressing and told with such a harsh feminist bent that they probably make most people (well, most men anyway)feel more like castrating themselves than getting turned on. ( I actually haven't even seen her most notorious film, "Fat Girl", but after the truly depressing experience that was the supposedly very similar "36 Fillete" I've never wanted to).You would expect then given Breillat's typical misanthropic bent that when she made a French costume drama like this one, the liaisons would be even more dangerous and the intentions even crueler. This is actually a surprisingly soft-hearted film though where all the main characters are pretty likable and sympathetic (at least in some ways). The only typically harsh Breillat touch is a couple having frenzied sex next to the funeral pyre of their dead daughter. The basic story involves a handsome young rake, who is about to marry a beautiful young heiress (Mesquia) with the blessing of her jaded-but-wise grandmother (who, since this is set in 1835, is herself a battle-scarred veteran of the original pre-revolutionary "dangerous liaison" era). He is unable to give up his long-time mistress, however, a social-climbing Spanish divorcée (Argento) with whom he has had a passionate ten year love-hate relationship. All the acting is very good and the characters believable (although you do have to wonder why a 19th Spanish noblewoman would have a tattoo on her butt). My only real complaint was that it was about a half an hour too long and the climax was pretty anti-climactic.If you like either French costume dramas or typical Catherine Breillat films, you may or may not like this, since it ends being very different than either. It's not too bad though.