Last Summer: Catherine Breillat disturbs and Léa Drucker impresses (review)
This drama to be seen again this evening on Canal + features a love story between a forty-year-old lawyer and her 17-year-old step-son. A story which, as always with Catherine Breillat, ignores questions of morality and creates discomfort, as uncomfortable as it is fascinating to explore.
Canal + is showing a captivating film this evening: Last summerby Catherine Breillat, who offers a strong new role to Léa Drucker after the shock of Until the Guard, by Xavier Legrand. First discovered it in Cannes last May, and to wait until its first broadcast on television, we are sharing our review again.
Léa Drucker: “Xavier Legrand is very inspiring”
Review initially published on May 26, 2023, live from the Croisette:
Coincidentally with the programming, the Cannes selectors have just in two days proposed two films which explore two of the major characteristics of the French in the eyes of the whole world (with the clichés associated with them): our unique relationship with food and sex. Two films at odds with each other. On one side enveloping it Dodin Bouffantthe perfect antidote to the cynicism of our time, celebrating cooking as a loving gesture with a formal ambition for beauty in each plan (up to the point of removing any stain of grease in the making of invigorating recipes) which makes it our best candidate for 'Oscar for foreign film since The chorists to finally find the successor ofIndochina, It’s already 30 years! On the other, disturbing him and fleeing, like the plague, all empathy Last summer which talks about sexuality while ignoring any moralist point of view and the debates which constantly agitate our society on the subject.
It has been ten years since, due to health concerns, Catherine Breillat had to stay away from film sets. And although time has passed, she is holding on to her cinema. By freeing himself, as always, from the dominant thinking of his time. By questioning and challenging what we thought was established. Not out of a banal spirit of provocation but in a natural gesture which reflects who she deeply is.
A real girl, 36 little girl, Perfect love !, Romance… Breillat's cinema never smoothes corners, jostles, creates unease. This remake of a Danish film that has remained unreleased in our theaters (Dronningen by May el-Toukhy) should not be left out from this point of view, listening to the reactions at the end of his screening, between those who claimed to have seen the Palme and those who only had the word abjection to the mouth.
Last summer is the story of a forbidden love, that of a forty-year-old lawyer (who notably defends minor victims of abuse) with her 17-year-old stepson. Breillat films the bodies intertwining, the skin blushing with incredible intensity. She offers one of the most disturbing and Machiavellian portraits of a woman we have seen in a long time, driven by her desire but refusing to pay anything in the name of it.
The filmmaker ventures into a taboo subject without seeking to apologize for it or to balance points of view. It bristles, it disappoints, it creates permanent discomfort and is not necessarily pleasant to live with. But it also impresses, like the masterful interpretations of Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher (the younger brother of Paul, hero of the Animal Kingdom at the start of the festival). A winning return.
Trailer :
