Une vieille maîtresse (2007)
(The Last Mistress)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 104m
Director: Catherine Breillat
Cast: Asia Argento, Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud, Claude Sarraute
Synopsis:
Paris, 1835. Before entrusting her granddaughter to a noted libertine, a Marquise extracts from him an account of his ten-year devotion to a notorious Spanish demi-mondaine, and with it his assurance that he will not return to her bed once married.
Review:
In one sense Breillat's curiously detached, even stiff, handling of her material might seem ideally suited to a period piece, but this is rather less satisfying than Rohmer's flirtations with same. The key might be the language, which seems as equally preserved in aspic as the performances by the handsome but uncharismatic leads (though Argento does try hard). Like the tableaux of transfigured sexual passion, this is more of an allusion to a Laclos-style tale of erotic obsession than the real thing.
(The Last Mistress)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 104m
Director: Catherine Breillat
Cast: Asia Argento, Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud, Claude Sarraute
Synopsis:
Paris, 1835. Before entrusting her granddaughter to a noted libertine, a Marquise extracts from him an account of his ten-year devotion to a notorious Spanish demi-mondaine, and with it his assurance that he will not return to her bed once married.
Review:
In one sense Breillat's curiously detached, even stiff, handling of her material might seem ideally suited to a period piece, but this is rather less satisfying than Rohmer's flirtations with same. The key might be the language, which seems as equally preserved in aspic as the performances by the handsome but uncharismatic leads (though Argento does try hard). Like the tableaux of transfigured sexual passion, this is more of an allusion to a Laclos-style tale of erotic obsession than the real thing.
(The Last Mistress)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 104m
Director: Catherine Breillat
Cast: Asia Argento, Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud, Claude Sarraute
Synopsis:
Paris, 1835. Before entrusting her granddaughter to a noted libertine, a Marquise extracts from him an account of his ten-year devotion to a notorious Spanish demi-mondaine, and with it his assurance that he will not return to her bed once married.
Review:
In one sense Breillat's curiously detached, even stiff, handling of her material might seem ideally suited to a period piece, but this is rather less satisfying than Rohmer's flirtations with same. The key might be the language, which seems as equally preserved in aspic as the performances by the handsome but uncharismatic leads (though Argento does try hard). Like the tableaux of transfigured sexual passion, this is more of an allusion to a Laclos-style tale of erotic obsession than the real thing.