N'est-ce pas la pire chose que vous ayez jamais entendue ?
My thoughts on Last Summer
It has been more than a decade since Catherine Breillat, one of the grand provocateurs of modern world cinema, has released a film, a period in which movies have grown safer and more predictable as they have made their shift from artistic creations to what is now referred to as “content.” Now she has returned with her newest film, Last Summer, and for those people out there who actually enjoy it when the movies that they watch challenge them instead of merely placating them, it should prove to be a cause for celebration. While it may not quite rise to the level of such impressive previous works as Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2001) or Sex is Comedy (2002), it is still more daring and provocative in its observations of sex, gender and power roles than anything else you are likely to see anytime soon and demonstrates that her skills as a filmmaker have not atrophied at all during her ten-year break from behind the camera.
The film follows the story of Anne (Lea Drucker), an attorney who specializes in advocating for victims of sexual abuse and in an opening scene that will come across as even more audacious once the end credits roll, she explains to her clearly traumatized teenaged girl client the ways in which the defense team will attempt to portray her as a slut and a liar in court and the ways in which she plans to counter that approach. Outside of work, she lives in the suburbs of Paris with husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), a successful businessman who is far less exciting or glamorous as his much younger wife, and their two young adopted daughters. This is Pierre’s second marriage and early in the film, he announces to Anne that Theo (Samuel Kircher), his 17-year-old son from that previous union, has gotten in trouble again at his school and will be coming to live with them for the immediate future.
When Theo arrives, he proves to be a sullen, ill-mannered twerp who leaves messes all around the house and refuses the various attempts by Pierre to belatedly bond with him after years of benign neglect. On the other hand, he unexpectedly get along wonderfully with his step-sisters and Anne also finds herself willing to go to bat for him, even going so far as to cover for him when she discovers that he was responsible for a recent break-in and theft at the house. As the days go on and Pierre is increasingly distracted by work, she is the one who winds up bonding with him, sharing drinks and conversation with him until the moment comes when the two end up in bed together.
What happens from this point, I leave for you to discover on your own. My guess is that you are already formulating in your head the ways in which the story could go—the initial rush of the sexual encounter followed almost immediately by the inevitable realization that it was a bad idea that can never be repeated, the equally inevitable repetition of said event, the close call in which the shocking secret is almost discovered, Theo growing increasingly unstable in the face of Anne’s demands to end the affair and, of course, the part where things are inevitably revealed and Anne is threatened with the loss of everything. Breillat does follow this template to a certain extent but dials down the more melodramatic aspects to present the story in a more low-key and realistic manner that may lack the kind of finger-waving moralizing or cheap thrills that some viewers may be expecting but which ultimately makes for a tougher, stronger film in the end.
Although the film is not an original creation of Breillat’s—it is an adaptation of the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts that sticks fairly closely to its source throughout—it certainly feels as if it is one with her own self-generated projects. As was the case with such startling provocations as A Real Young Girl (1976), Romance, Fat Girl and Anatomy of Hell (2004), she takes a premise that could have easily been the set-up for a straight-up pornographic film—where premises involving pseudo-step-parents and/or step kids have become an increasingly popular genre in recent years—and mines it for realism over luridness. Take the sex scenes between Anne and Theo that we see over the course of the film. Considering the nature of the story, we might expect at least their first tryst to be a super-steamy encounter that justifies their sort-of transgression. In fact, with one brief exception, Anne’s encounters with him are virtually indistinguishable from the passion-free sexual interlude between her and Pierre that we saw earlier in the film. At first, this seems like a particularly dark joke on Breillat’s part but as we get to know Anne—who has earlier confessed to having had sexual longings for an older man when she was younger and whose own first sexual experience was not particularly good—one’s attitude towards her, no matter what it may be, cannot help but shift to being more understanding towards what would compel her to such seemingly inexplicable self-destructive behavior, another running theme connecting the central female characters found in the majority of her oeuvre.
That said, Breillat is too smart and complex of a filmmaker to let Anne entirely off the hook either as things progress. For starters, while the assignations between Anne and Theo are not technically incestuous in nature, they do involve an adult woman and a 17-year-old boy—a 17-year-old boy who clearly has emotional issues that are causing him to lash out at his father—and Breillat always makes sure to stress that point. She further underlines Anne’s culpability by making her character’s profession one that finds her trying to provide aid and help to people around Theo’s age who have been abused by people in positions of power over them. Like the aforementioned sex scenes, this aspect at first seems like a bit of ironic humor but it curdles into something much darker and horrifying as Anne takes the professional capabilities normally deployed in the service of good and twists them around in order to extricate herself from her predicament with as little damage to her lifestyle or relationships as possible. (Drucker is quite good throughout the film but it is in this home stretch that her performance becomes extraordinary.)
As has generally been the case with Breillat’s films, at least in America, Last Summer is unlikely to set any box-office records and it is likely to polarize those who do come out for it, whether they are doing so out of admiration for her previous work or out of more prurient reasons. Given the choice, I suspect that she wouldn’t have it any other way. Here is a filmmaker who has dedicated her career to pushing and provoking moviegoers—even those who profess to admire her—and Last Summer ably demonstrates that after a career that has gone on for nearly 50 years, she is still both willing and more than capable of shaking things up.