Release date: June 27
Director/Writer: Catherine Breillat
Cinematographer: Giorgos Arvanitis
Starring: Asia Argento, Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Roxane Mesquida
Studio/Run Time: IFC Films, 104 mins.
Sexy French period film appeals to biology and emotion
With puffy eyes and a natural sensuality, Asia Argento may’ve found a perfect vehicle for her considerable but ephemeral talents in Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress. It’s a period piece, Breillat’s first, set in 19th-century France, where a foppish young man is torn between his loaded fiancé and his longtime Spanish mistress (Argento). Breillat’s perpetual obsession from film to film is female sexuality, but often her movies seem more clinical than insightful, more biological than emotional. This time out, though, by braiding the desires of her male and female characters instead of letting one oppress the other, she’s found an appealing balance.
In the last year alone, Argento has shot films in France, Hong Kong, Spain and the U.S., so she seems at home just about anywhere. As frank and fearless as her director, she’s particularly well-suited to Breillat’s erotically charged material. In The Last Mistress, something about her seems crudely contemporary; she’s both powerful and wounded, so it’s never exactly clear who possesses whom in the affair. One thing’s for sure: This mistress won’t slip softly into the night while her lover weds another.