THE LAST MISTRESS (UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE) World Cinema

Catherine Breillat is known for her transgressive studies of female sexuality in film. In shocking contemporary dramas including FAT GIRL and ROMANCE, she combines graphic interest in female sexual pleasure with ironic portrayals of power struggles in a male-dominated society. THE LAST MISTRESS sets these themes in a strikingly different setting: the aristocratic universe of 19th-century

France. This is no conventional costume drama , however. With a noticeable absence of a classical music soundtrack and the requisite wide shots of opulence, Breillat focuses on the minutiae of interpersonal exchange and sexual politics. Adapted from Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novel, MISTRESS chronicles the love affair between tempestuous Spanish mistress La Vellini (Asia Argento) and the womanizing Ryno di Marigny (novice Fu’ad Ait Aattou).

Breillat made the film exactly one year after suffering a stroke and it cost as much as all of her other films put together. Argento fuels the film with her brilliant performance as a female seducer who is furiously enraged at the hypocritical values of polite society.