Catherine Breillat’s film brings a forbidden relationship to the screen with her signature blend of sensuality and danger.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
With a title like “Last Summer,” you’d think you were about to see a drama about a torrid vacation romance cut short by the demands of getting back to school. But since the director is novelist, award-winning filmmaker, and sexual provocateur Catherine Breillat (“Fat Girl”), making her first feature in a decade, you know it’s going to be a lot more complicated, transgressive and sexy than that. Based on the 2019 Danish film “Queen of Hearts,” “Last Summer” explores a tumultuous, taboo, and unlawful relationship between Anne (Lea Drucker), an attorney who ironically specializes in representing abused minors, and the troubled teenage son of her aging yet still virile husband, Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), a financier under government investigation for tax evasion.
Our introduction to Anne comes while she informs a girl she represents of the ugly tactics the defense will use against her in her rape case. But soon, we are in the country with Anne and her young, adopted daughters Serena (Serena Hu) and Angela (Angela Chen), who are both helmeted for their riding lessons. Anne lives in great comfort in the loving and mostly sedate country home she shares with Pierre and the girls. Her best friend is her sister Mina (Clotilde Curau), who toils at the local hair salon/spa. Complications arise when Pierre’s ex-wife dumps their rebellious adolescent son Theo (Samuel Kicher) on Anne and Pierre, disrupting their happy home. Despite his name, Theo is the serpent in this middle-class Eden, and this is territory already staked out by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Soon after his arrival, Anne and Pierre’s home is broken into, and items are stolen.
This is only a prelude to troubles to come. While Pierre is away, Anne watches a film on Theo’s phone with him at his bedside. Next thing you know, they kiss. It’s one of Breillat’s long-held shots and a reminder that a 20-second kiss filmed by Edison in 1896 was a sensation in early cinema. The kiss in “Last Summer” leads to sex, the first of several lusty encounters.
“Last Summer” is a particularly detailed and exact study of a sexual relationship that is fraught with danger and scandal. At first, Theo just seems happy and lucky. Anne, of course, knows what the consequences might be all too well, but she gives in utterly to this life-shattering whim of Eros. Outside of perverse vice, what could her motive be? We seldom know the answers to such questions.
But we are never less than certain that we are watching two people whose feelings are real and credible. The love affair of Anne and Theo can end in disaster. Is that a caution or an aphrodisiac?
Theo lounges mostly shirtless with his svelte man-boy physique and smoldering gaze. With her blonde locks, attractive features, figure-accenting frocks, and (in one scene) sexy bathing suit, Anne is also an erotic figure, a middle-aged object of desire. That our lovers are a young man and an older woman gives the story a somewhat less scandalous grounding than its opposite. The recent Jenna Ortega drama “Miller’s Girl” created a mini-tsunami of online vitriol because of a lovemaking scene between the actor and her older colleague Martin Freeman, aka the screen’s Bilbo Baggins. In some quarters (French, perhaps?), this sort of young male-older woman experience is considered desirable, and Breillat does not shy away from the sexual act itself, although the focus is on a wanton Anne.
When the dark secret is revealed, Anne and Breillat turn the tables on us with a brilliant, unexpected flourish. (High-heeled) shoes drop. But la vie goes on. Stick around to hear French chanson master Leo Ferre perform his 1961 hit single “Vingt ans.” Like “Last Summer,” it’s a knockout.
‘Last Summer’
Rating: Not rated, sexually suggestive scenes, nudity, profanity.
Cast: Lea Drucker, Samuel Kircher, Olivier Rabourdin
Director: Catherine Breillat
Writer: Breillat
Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Where to watch: The Brattle
Grade: A-
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