The Last Mistress
After a run of more controversial, sexually explicit films, director Catherine Breillat took an outwardly more conventional turn with this sumptuous historical romp about a 19th-century Parisian libertine (Fu’ad Aït Aattou) torn between his hot-blooded Spanish mistress (Asia Argento) and his virginal new bride (Roxane Mesquida). But the veteran provocatrice of French cinema has little time for convention, transforming a costume drama into a no-costume melodrama full of bodice-ripping lust, gender-twisting power games and lingering female-gaze shots of Aattou’s ripe, androgynous beauty. Freely adapted from Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s scandalous 1851 novel, THE LAST MISTRESS takes carnal pleasure in its juicy perversions and dangerous liaisons.
Asia Argento, Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Roxane Mesquida
- Notes From Kim GordonA period melodrama. When I first saw this movie I laughed so much. The exaggeration of everything, from the saturation of color to the entwinement of the lovers’ bodies, always so entangled, depicting passion and female sensuality and abandon to a ridiculous degree. I had the pleasure of meeting Catherine, and we talked about painting. She said she considered herself a painter more than a filmmaker—she loved the process of color-adjusting—and spoke of her love of Renaissance painters and their use of red. I read an interview where she said she liked to paint the blood herself in this film, doing what she’s always done as an artist.