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i must have seen a different film!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

What you open to can be bigger and more fulfilling if you are careful to make those things few. Some films you can let permeate your soul, and others you must keep at a distance. Part of the experience of film, unavoidably, is how to handle celebrity. Sorting out who is easy; keeping a reign on how is harder, especially (for me) where women are concerned. I allow Asia into my field of vision, together with a few similar excessive female lives. The simple narrative is merely that they live their lives deeply, with some dangerous mix of abandon and control. Our vision only sees the cinematic skin of their lives in sex and relationships, but we infer the internal passion and focus.Breillat makes powerful films, formed as skits about damaging sex and recoil. The balance is a bit unfair because these things are easy to communicate but hard to convey in a manner that you can use in building a self. But she is honest and we see her. She apparently had some severe medical event and this is her first film after recovery. She merely adapts a book, a story about a man reluctantly captured by a woman. That woman is played by Asia, presumably using much of herself or what she uses in acting herself.Narratively, the thing is well structured. We have an outer wrapping: a couple telling each other the 'scandalous' story we are about to see. Then we have the story of the romance, and an inner story where the man tells the story. These three versions do not coincide, but the tension among the versions is not mined as we would hope.The society dunces have the romance as simply sexual gluttony, too marvelous to abandon. The story told by the man is one of reluctant obsession, a curse that is inescapable and that only incidentally involves the escape of sex. What we see is sparse, allowing us to struggle with our own voyeuristic issues: do we allow ourselves to be captured by the nudity and sex we see, or do we allow the narrative to have its own passion without feeding it ours?This is where the attraction of celebrity engagement confuses because Asia exists outside the movie. We see the familiar tattoos. We see the commitments, still rare among actresses. We see the risk. It works, I think, but only by accident and it may not for you if you have not followed her life from that of the tortured film child.The sexual roles, incidentally, are reversed. The guy is passive, possibly a victim and softly feminine. He lies like a stereotypical woman. The mistress is bold, open, fearless, aggressive. She is possibly the predator, fate be denied.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

The Last Mistress, a film by Catherine Breillat, director of the hot-n-sexy (and probably X-rated if released in the 1970s) Romance, deals with the torn and frayed and wretched relationship between Vellini (Asia Argento), and Ryno de Marigny (first timer Fu'ad Ait Aattou), and how Ryno's mistress threatens his marriage to Hermandarde (Roxane Mesquida), granddaughter of a tough but very fair and reasonable old matriarch. Breillat's direction of the story, which is mostly told in flashback as the grandmother of her soon-to-be-grandson-in-law tells all about his very turbulent bond with Vellini, is sometimes a little dull and stodgy, and it drags in spots that it really should pick up in high gear.But damn it all if it's not some absorbing times in the midst of a classic period setting among character we can relish in. Granted, Breillat likely cast Aattou for constantly having a 'sexy-man' look (somewhat akin, if you ask me, of a young Mick Jagger with ridiculously striking eyes and big lips). Argento, on the other hand, is cast perfectly, and for every bit that Aatou and Mesquida don't quite connect as husband and wife it's made up for by the total, hot connection between the real two leads. Argento is right at home with this twisted, damaged but alive and easily emotional creature, who has that tendency in French melodramas for tragedy at any moment just to get a rise. But she's also tender in surprising moments, and lets her soul bare completely in rough sex scenes (the craziest set in the desert following a very sudden death of a character), which par for Breillat are go-for-broke.What the film may lack in really being a fully "modern" work- it feels like a lot of it is so stuck in the period novel setting that it's locked away, which maybe was the right choice- it's made up for by the stars' appeal and the drive of the torrid love affair that just won't go away. It's appealing, boring, and highly charged in equal measure.

Une vieille maîtresse (2007), adapted and directed by Catherine Breillat, was shown in the U.S. with the title, "The Last Mistress." This is a period film, set in early 19th-century France.The basic plot is a love triangle--Fu'ad Ait Aattou plays the young aristocrat, Ryno de Marigny, who wants to marry the virtuous young woman, Hermangarde, played by the elegant Roxane Mesquida. Asia Argento plays Vellini, a highly sophisticated courtesan, with whom de Marigny has been having an affair for ten years.The film is filled with beautiful women and lots of sex, but not much else. de Marigny doesn't seem all that desirable or interesting to me, and I didn't buy the plot line that Vellini simply couldn't let him out of her life. It's not that prostitutes can't fall in love, but it struck me as unlikely that this prostitute would fall in love--and stay in love--with this client.We are supposed to understand that sexual values and attitudes are shifting at this time, and women are becoming liberated from the assumption that they can only be desired, but can't have desires themselves. Maybe so, but I think that justification was tacked on to a film whose raison d'etre is the display of lovely female bodies.This movie was shown at the excellent Rochester High Falls International Film Festival. Most of the action takes place in drawing rooms and bedrooms, so the film will work well on DVD.

This is a beautiful period film with a lot of Breillat's trademark unflinching look at love and war between sexes. The story is old, but this is first time I see it put so frankly - they not marrying the the love of their life....Sex is shot amazingly. There is an eyeful of historical detail and actors are looking great, dressed and undressed. The book it is based on according to Breillat, is autobiographical, which makes it even more interesting.To put it simply - great work in many aspects. Bravo again Catherine!