Irish Film Institute -THE LAST MISTRESS

THE LAST MISTRESS

Director: CATHERINE BREILLAT

FRANCE-ITALY • 2007 SUBTITLED • COLOUR • DOLBY DIGITAL STEREO • 114 MIN


WELL-KNOWN FOR HER SEXUALLY EXPLICIT AND INTELLECTUALLY CONFRONTATIONAL DRAMAS (ROMANCE, ANATOMY OF HELL), CATHERINE BREILLAT HERE SHAKES HISTORICAL DRAMA OUT OF ITS PETTICOATS WITH A TORRID BUT RIGOROUSLY EXECUTED TALE OF BOHEMIAN AMOUR FOU BASED ON AN 1851 NOVEL BY JULES BARBEY D’AUREVILLY.
The film, set in Paris in 1835, recounts the troubled amours of handsome young fop Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou) with Vellini (Asia Argento), a Spanish courtesan whose liberated behaviour is the scandal of the town. Ryno is due to marry the beautiful, wealthy and virginal Hermengarde (Roxane Mesquida), but first has to sever his long-standing liaison with Vellini—who loves him still, despite the growing element of hate in their relationship and her concurrent affairs with other Paris grandees. The character of Vellini is a femme fatale in the grand manner, and it takes a truly flamboyant actress to give such a part its due. The role is made, in fact, for Asia Argento. While some of her scenes are clearly pitched with provocation in mind—notably a scene where she tearfully makes love right in front of her dead child’s funeral pyre— Argento rises to the occasion with a brooding taste for carnally-charged melodrama, whether it’s scrunching a wine glass at Ryno while dressed as the Devil at a costume ball, or her pricelessly callous ‘Adios’ on leaving her husband. Breillat’s film without doubt contains the most explicit sex, and talk about sex, ever seen in a historical costume drama. Her script proposes a provocative feminist take on the original material, with Vellini featuring as a defiant repository for her society’s fears about female sexuality.—Jonathan Romney.

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