Last Summer by Catherine Breillat: This novel will haunt you, but you shouldn’t miss it at the cinema!

Starting this Wednesday, September 13, and after an absence of nearly 10 years, Kathryn Bray welcomes herself to your cinemas with a film whose title is still relevant today, if panicked outdoor thermometers are to be believed.

It must be said that the filmmaker responsible for raising the temperature from within and in his own way will be at the helm of his feature film with a more sensitive subject.

Be warned, this work, which depicts the romantic effects of a family setting between two protagonists of different ages, may disturb young audiences.

Last Summer tells the story of Anna, a forty-year-old famous lawyer who lives with her husband Pierre and their two little daughters, aged 6 and 7. One day, Theo, 17 years old, Pierre’s son from a previous marriage, moves in with them. The beginning of a forbidden relationship between young Eph and his attractive stepmother…

Disturbing desire shot differently

In 1988, in 36 Fillette, he already highlighted the disturbing summer relationship between a forty-year-old and a 14-year-old girl. In 2023, with the adaptation of the Danish film Queen of Hearts, Sulfur Braille revisits this problematic issue, among others, with the impetus of the producer Said Ben Said, who is already of the origin of Paul Verhoeven’s other Sulfur Elle.

The same dangerous game, the same crudeness, the same anti-romanticism, as in the way an incestuous relationship was presented 35 years ago. But in the meantime, the world has changed, the idea of ​​sexuality and its possible violence has been deeply questioned, and Breillat knows it.

Also last summer, it’s a grown-up woman’s point of view about a relationship that she initially chooses to explore, revise and film through the gaze of her troubled protagonist (we told you about the concept of the “female gaze” in detail here) to help further deconstruct the prejudices of classic cinema on the subject. And our challenge is to fully embrace ourselves.

In particular, in the first love scene, Breila’s camera seems to be glued to the face of his heroine (the impressive Leah Drucker, who we’ll talk about in more detail below), suggesting what she sees and feels as a bodily subject. An act of love and no longer an object of desire.

The object of desire (and victim) here is her, this annoying, juvenile, but attractive teenager. In the skin of this young boy, sometimes seductive, sometimes innocent, Samuel Kircher is amazing.

Because adolescence remains “His Passion” Catherine Breillat takes the time to look at him carefully. We are quick to forgive him the dangerous little game he played for a while, as Rambo warned us: “You’re not serious when you’re 17.”

When reporters in Cannes asked him about this difficult role at a press conference, he confided that he was “He touched this character that no one has paid attention to before. Suddenly he’s being let go, he’s coming of age for the first time. He’s counting on someone. And it’s boring for him. They’re holding hands for two days. Later, and it’s causing him real violence.”

A troubled and ruthless novel

We go to violence in relationships gradually. It’s a shame when we remember that the heroine of the film is a mother and lawyer, specializing in sexual abuse of minors (hello irony and provocation).

Heroine from the start and destabilizing when it comes to the teenage question she carries at the beginning of the film “How many boys (she) slept with”. “Two, three? I should know.”

this “Mysterious woman, less predatory than the original film, with a wider range” However, it is not According to Breillat, “Neither manipulative nor predatory, he doesn’t anticipate what will happen.”.

Overwhelmed by his desire, she goes so far as to threaten (or unknowingly sabotage?) her perfectly ordered family life and career. Famous “The irresistible temptation to fall…” That will finally stop firmly, but on the second step.

And yes, after love at first sight, the storm. After several coitus, both disturbing and risky, and several sweet and even enchanted moments, the necessary parting is cruel, even unforgiving.

In a terrifying turn of events, the relationship changes. The disfigured face of the heroine, which Braille always watches carefully, as if she identifies with us, is overcome by denial. What follows is a scene of an anthological lie played by an unfaithful woman for her husband (an unremarkable Olivier Rabourdin). A scene that will turn your stomach…

Leah Drucker transgressive and transfigured

Protective or dangerous, passionate or ultra-rational: In the shoes of this forty-year-old in charge and slowly losing her footing, Leah Drucker (we’re getting there eventually) is fascinating and chilling.

This woman, sometimes sensual, sometimes cruel, an eclectic actress (remember her in a completely different work), approached him with the necessary fear:

“I used a lot of things that I felt afraid of doing a character like that, towards an image that I didn’t rationally understand.

It was an immersion, I tried to remain an actor like a leaf floating on water and get information.” He confided to the assembled Cannes press.

You have to want to discover something while shooting. I was looking for the key to identify with him without judging him. I knew that working with Catherine I would be inspired by her unique vision of the world. (…)

This very sexy, sensual woman is also something I haven’t done so much before. I myself did something wrong to go to this woman.”

A crime that the director was able to capture and reveal, allowing himself to be fascinated and inspired during filming by what the actors had to offer. Blue eyes crinkled until they closed to one side mid-orgasm. Traits of a young angel damaged by others’ rejection and lies.

“I need a frame to discover my actors. They inspire me in the moment. They enter my dreams and my fantasies the moment I see them in the frame (…), when the camera absorbs them. The film is then created: the moment it is created.”

A gripping film, frontal and daring, profoundly freeing. And ultimately very, very disturbing. You have to prepare for it. Last Summer is in theaters and definitely worth checking out.