Last Summer

You can always tell a character in a Catherine Breillat film because of how much they talk about sex. The act of conversation is more arousing for to the French director than that of copulation, even in her explicit works like her 1999 breakout Romance or its 2001 follow up, virginity drama Fat Girl. In Last Summer (L'Été dernier), she takes on taboo sex again as attorney Anne (Drucker) launches into an affair with her stepson Théo (Kircher).

The teen is, as Anne’s sister Mina (Courau) puts it, a problem child. Sent to live with his father, Pierre (Rabourdin), and sauntering into the house like a Guess? model, he’s the tempting treat placed in front of Anne, and she gobbles him up.

The stepmother fetish here is really a vehicle to examine the questions of an adult’s responsibility in a sexual relationship with a minor – although, as Breillat makes sure to point out, Théo is not legally an adult but still above the age of consent). Todd Haynes took a lurid look at the subject in the ripped-from-the-tabloids May December, and his soapy hand deprived it of anything other than skin-deep observation. Breillat has become associated with a more coldly disassociated fascination with human perversity: After seeing Last Summer, one may presume she is fascinated by the carnal antics of humans because she doesn’t understand them. People, that is. So many of their actions here are completely implausible, to the point of stupidity. No, worse, of insulting the audience. There’s a key moment at which Anne returns to her empty home and finds that it has been ransacked. Her response? To wander in, turn a couple of chairs over, chat with her friend, and then call her husband. This would be an idiotic response from anyone, but for a prosecutor who deals with rape cases – violent, sex-based crimes – this is borderline suicidal.

Adapting Denmark’s 2019 Oscar contender Queen of Hearts (Dronningen), Breillat makes small but significant changes to the family dynamic. Pierre is no longer a doctor but a businessman, much older than Anne, and their children are adopted, rather than biologically theirs. With these changes Breillat is seemingly determined to contrast Anne with Mina, a single mother raising a child with little assistance from her deadbeat ex. Instead, she just comes across as disengaged, making her relationship with Théo both more inevitable and less intriguing.

There’s no sign in the screenplay of any of the bleak subtlety that Queen of Hearts writers Trine Dyrholm and Gustav Lindh handed to Breillat or her collaborator, veteran scriptwriter Pascal Bonitzer, nor of the tortured inner lives that made it so crushing. Indeed, it’s only in the third act, when Anne uses her position as the grownup in the room to discredit Théo, that there’s even a glimpse of the insight to which Breillat aspires. The narrative is too flat, too drily filmed by César-nominated cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (8 Women) to induce much emotion or debate about Anne’s hypocrisy and abuse of power. Breillat’s characters may be talking about sex and transgression once again. Yet, as is often the problem with translations, all the nuance has been lost.