Last Summer
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“Tell me about your first time”
Overview
A provocative new work from Catherine Breillat (Romance, À ma sœur!), Last Summer proves she's refined her execution while losing none of her edge. Anne (Léa Drucker) is a woman who seems to have it all: a successful legal career and an idyllic country estate shared with her husband Pierre and their daughters. When her affectionate relationship with Theo (Samuel Kircher), Pierre's teenage son from a previous marriage, begins to deepen into something more illicit Anne realises she's grown tired of her privileged and perfect existence. As their thrill-seeking behaviour grows and the couple gives into their desires they risk Theo's future and put Anne's career and family life in danger.
“(Breillat's) exacting staging produces both intensely evocative moments and a rare, quietly terrifying pugnacity that permeates the drama.”
“A provocation and a melodrama (...) these characters are precisely rendered humans—in their sensitivities, their wants, their vile follies.”
“Last Summer is complex, tricky, at times very uncomfortable and thoroughly engrossing.”
Why You Should See This Film
Last Summer is treading into very murky waters, but despite the hazy, languid visuals a director as accomplished as Breillat was never going to let this become one of those classically French age gap "romances" they seem to love. Instead, she teases out the strands of age, class, gender and sexuality until all that remains is a fractured bourgeois family unit with no feeling at its core. Along with characteristically sparse natural dialogue, Breillat uses images of adolescent innocence and the empty victories of adulthood to define the power struggles in Anne and Theo's relationship, with moments so stark they leave a lump in the throat.
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