The Decade List: Une vieille maîtresse (2007)

Une vieille maîtresse [The Last Mistress] – dir. Catherine Breillat

The lack of bite in The Last Mistress (or, as it is more accurately translated, An Old Mistress) is not something I fault Catherine Breillat for, as it offers a shift in tone and voice from the filmmaker, working for the first time from source material outside of her own. Based on the novel by the Barbey d’Aurevilly, The Last Mistress focuses on a handsome young bachelor Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou) torn between the love of his young virginal wife (Roxane Mesquida) and aging Spanish mistress (Asia Argento).

In using a voice less confrontational than she’s known for when directing from her own material, Breillat composes the film like a painting, adorned with almost entirely flat, picturesque dimensions, infrequently interrupted by a close-up (usually of Aattou). In the visual blueprint of The Last Mistress, we’re reminded of what Breillat’s really about: meta dissections of crippling male/female relations. Only here, it’s dressed up like a sordid tale of corset-wearing, carriage-riding liaisons dangereuses. As Ryno’s Spanish mistress Vellini, Argento’s career obsession with playing women ripe with sexuality would have made her a perfect candidate for Breillat. Argento embodies a rawness that almost feels out-of-place. Her presence isn’t as mellifluous as Amira Casar in Anatomy of Hell or Mesquida and Anaïs Reboux in Fat Girl, and yet it’s in the roughness that Argento places on Vellini that distinguishes her from the otherwise sedated refine of the rest of the cast and ultimately gives The Last Mistress its haunting quality (Breillat told Argento to use Marlene Dietrich in von Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman as inspiration).

Breillat’s craft yields a mesmerizing effect on The Last Mistress. The film subsists somewhere on a different plane than the director’s other work, relying more on the perils the central romance than abrasive stylization to stick with the audience. On a larger scale, it doesn’t resonate as long as Fat Girl has; the latter still haunts me to this day. Yet, it’s still just as surprising of a work as anything else Breillat has made. Additionally, The Last Mistress has one of the best single lines of dialogue of the ‘00s, occurring between Argento and Amira Casar as an opera singer at a lavish dinner party: “I hate anything feminine… except in young men, of course.”

With: Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Asia Argento, Claude Sarraute, Roxane Mesquida, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud, Amira Casar, Jean-Philippe Tesse, Sarah Pratt, Lio, Isabelle Renauld, Léa Seydoux, Nicholas Hawtrey, Caroline Ducey
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, based on the novel by Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly
Cinematography: Giorgos Arvanitis
Country of Origin: France/Italy
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: 25 May 2007 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 7 October 2007 (New York Film Festival)

You see your gypsy

Transylvania – dir. Tony Gatlif – 2006 – France

When looking at cinema with the auteur theory at work, it’s always reassuring to find a director returning to the themes that seemed to previously obsess him. Many people have made such assessment to Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park in which the director revisits the ideas behind the films that got people interested in the first place, notably Mala Noche and My Own Private Idaho. With Transylvania, Algerian-born Tony Gatlif does the same, returning to his love and obsession with gypsy culture. More so than his “documentary” Latcho Drom, Transylvania is more accurately a thematic sequel to Gadjo dilo (The Crazy Stranger), his 1997 film in which a Frenchman (Romain Duris) travels to Romania to find a singer who’s become his obsession. Obsession and gypsy culture, particularly music, fuel Transylvania, as three women (Asia Argento, Amira Casar and Alexandra Beaujard) trek to the titular city in search of Argento’s deported lover. Her lover, whom she just discovered is the father of her baby, is naturally a musician, a pianist of Romanian descent.

Transylvania closely aligns itself with The Crazy Stranger more than Latcho Drom or Vengo in their central motives. Whereas Latcho Drom and Vengo capture rhythm and beauty in the movement and music of a group of people, Transylvania and The Crazy Stranger represent a journey. For Gatlif, there appears to be something missing in the heart of the western European and something inherently desirable about this gypsy lifestyle. There’s a purity of life which is never spoken of but suggested through the pursuit and subsequent transformation of French Stéphane (Duris) and Italian Zingarina (Argento). As is expected of Gatlif, Transylvania is exquisitely composed, beautiful and lush, but there seems to be a patronizing quality about returning to the singular theme of western Europeans finding themselves in the east. Perhaps it wouldn’t seem as critical if Transylvania didn’t seem like an almost entire transposition of Argento into Duris’ role. I also wouldn’t suggest watching Transylvania directly after Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress, as there’s only so much one can take of Asia Argento mumbling her dialogue whilst writhing in pain. Funny that I have yet another Argento film, Boarding Gate, next on my list of films to see. I’m a masochist.

Vellini Satyricon

The Last Mistress [Une vieille maîtresse] – dir. Catherine Breillat – 2007 – France/Italy

By now, you probably know that the most shocking thing about Catherine Breillat’s latest is how un-shocking it actually is. I hate using the term “provocateuse” for Breillat, as I think she exists above such classification, but perhaps it’s the best way to describe her to those unfamiliar. The lack of bite in The Last Mistress (or, as it is more accurately translated, An Old Mistress) is not something I fault Breillat for, as it thus proves that her voice isn’t always raised to the point of screaming as one would normally contest. Instead, The Last Mistress is a polished adaptation of the Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novel in which a young bachelor (Fu’ad Ait Aattou) must chose between the love of his young virginal wife (Roxane Mesquida) and aging mistress (Asia Argento).

With the absence of feisty confrontation, The Last Mistress gave me the opportunity to look at Breillat beneath the surface. The film is surprisingly very tableau, composed with almost entirely flat, picturesque dimensions, infrequently interrupted by a close-up (usually of Ait Aattou). It’s in her visual scheme that we’re reminded of what Breillat’s really about: meta dissections of crippling male/female relations. As the Spanish mistress Vellini, Argento’s career obsession with playing women ripe with sexuality would have made her a perfect candidate for Breillat. I’m not saying she doesn’t live up this candidacy, but her performance is raw to the point where I could foresee the confusion of it being “bad.” She doesn’t appear as in tune with Breillat as Amira Casar in Anatomy of Hell or Mesquida and Anaïs Reboux in Fat Girl, and yet it’s in the roughness that Argento places on Vellini that distinguishes her from the otherwise sedated refine of the rest of the cast and ultimately gives The Last Mistress its haunting quality.

With The Last Mistress, Breillat yet again crafts a film of mesmerizing power. The film subsists somewhere on a different plane than the director’s other work, relying more on the perils the film’s central romance than abrasive stylization to stick with the audience. On a larger scale, the film may not resonate as long as Fat Girl has; the latter still haunts me to this day. Yet, it’s still just as surprising of a work as anything else Breillat has made. Additionally, The Last Mistress contains the best line of dialogue I’ve heard all year during an interaction between Argento and Amira Casar as an opera singer. “I despise everything feminine… except in young boys.”