Asia Argento, as one would suspect, this being the latest film by Catherine Breillat, logs in a considerable amount of time unclothed in "Une viellie maitresse", although, to the disappointment of Breillat's fans who misread her work as porn, less graphically than past leading ladies, most notably, Caroline Ducey in 1999's "Romance", who performed unsimulated oral sex on Rocco Siffredi, four years before Chloe Sevigny, likewise, opened wide for Vincent Gallo, in "The Brown Bunny". Vellini's first encounter with Ryno de Marginy is tame, downright chaste(by Breillat's standards), as Argento, fully clothed, moans and grunts while Fu'ad Ait Aatou, fully clothed himself, expresses himself in a physical capacity. Breillat, never one to be conservative about representing female sexuality in her work, stages this first love scene like something out of a traditional period piece costumer. The context of this encounter between Vellini and Ryno de Marginy is the nobleman's impending marriage to Hermangarde(Roxanne Mesquida), "the jewel of French aristocracy". This mid-afternoon f*** is meant to be a parting gift to his mistress.The first nudity belongs to a little girl, the daughter that Vellini and her Frenchman reared in Algeria, who dies tragically from a scorpion's bite. Breillat, in her own words, told journalist Chris Wiegan, in his article "A Quick Chat with Catherine Breillat", that she takes "sexuality as a subject, not as an object." Prior to the Algerian tragedy, as part of an oral history that Ryno de Marginy recounts to Hermangarde's grandmother about his relationship with the mistress, he conjures up the day when La marquise de Flers(Claude Sarraute) told him that Vellini was "a woman, not an object". When the young girl is killed, she's being punished for being naked; not by Breillat, who's not a feminist in the traditional sense, but by the patriarchal church which equates nakedness with sin. The little girl has to die because the nude form is a temptation to man. Next to her funeral pyre, Argento is on top, straddling Aatou's body, her ample bosoms prominently displayed, unhindered by any scrap of clothing, as she tries to f*** the pain away. Since the woman is in anguish, mourning over a dead child, big breasts notwithstanding, the male gaze ignores the de-eroticizing circumstances, and finds pleasure in her pain. This is why Breillat's films aren't soft-core porn. Adult films don't have a self-reflexive component. Vellini has a right to grieve however she likes, it just so happens that sex helps, being buck-naked while she's having sex helps. Breillat sees her as a woman. The scene isn't about sexuality, it's about forgetting. When you lose somebody, you do whatever is possible to get out of your body. Vellini doesn't feel the penetration, she feels the loss of her child. But all the male viewer sees is a woman they'd like to have sex with; an object.During Ryno de Marigny's narrative in the grandmother's drawing room, the old woman changes from a seated position into a subtly provocative rearrangement of her body in which she's nearly falling out of her seat. She doesn't look particularly ladylike. Her laxness in the chair is the closest she'll get to sleeping with the young man. Very subtly, this woman of advanced age recalls the way Tori Amos seats herself in a sexual manner before the Bosendorfer piano. Ryno de Marginy not only seduced Hermangarde, but also this matured lady, who should have known better than to arrange a marriage between her granddaughter and a libertine.Wherever Ryno de Marginy goes, Vellini is sure to follow. She follows his man to the countryside, where the recently married couple decided to live, away from Paris, away from her. Their reunion takes place on top of a fort, in which Ryno de Marginy greets Vellini with a long phallic gun. The mistress grips the gun like she's pulling the male organ closer to her, transforming the penis as a weapon into the penis as a benign component of the male anatomy, since it's clear that Ryno de Marginy wants to shoot her with his very substance, not riddle her with bullets. "Une vieille maitresse" is a love story about a man's loyalty, not to his wife, but to his mistress. The filmmaker just goes about it in the most incendiary way possible.

Milan Kundera writes: "Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition." Case in point, Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou), an impoverished but elegantly handsome young man who is trapped between the aristocratic world to which he aspires, and an obsessive bond with a defiantly independent mistress, the boldly seductive Vellini (Asia Argento), an older but dazzling Spanish woman said to be born of an Italian noblewoman and a bullfighter. Adapted from a 19th-century novel Une vieille maîtresse by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, Catherine Breillat's beautiful and elegant The Last Mistress, challenges the patriarchal assumptions of the age by depicting a 36-year old woman's right to fully express her sexual desires even if it is means flaunting society's conventions and Christian misogynist teachings.Set in Paris in 1835, complete with elaborate period costumes and sumptuously decorated drawing rooms, the film opens with the gossip between two aging aristocrats, the Vicomte de Prony (Michael Lonsdale) and his wife, the Countess d'Artelles (Yolande Moreau about the ten-year affair between de Marigny and Vellini and the young man's impending marriage to the wealthy Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida). Hermangarde's grandmother La marquise de Flers, excellently played by the 80-year-old French writer Claude Sarrate, is an open-minded and rational individual who claims to be a woman of the 18th century. Worried that Ryno will not be able to get over his passion for his fiery Spanish mistress, de Flers listens attentively as Ryno relates to her the details of his long relationship, an affair that he says has now come to an end, telling her that "You don't betray a new love with an old mistress".In flashback, Ryno relates how he was overcome by Vellini's wild beauty after they were introduced at a party ten years before. Vellini, then married to a wealthy but dull Englishman, reacts negatively, however, when she overhears Ryno call her an ugly mutt and the young man is forced to vigorously pursue her despite her strong objections, forcing her to kiss him while the two are out riding. Her horrified husband witnesses the act and challenges Ryno to a duel the next morning. After deliberately missing his first shot, Ryno is shot in the chest, a wound from which he will take months to recover. The incident, however, triggers Vellini's awareness of her love for Ryno, exotically announced by her sucking the blood from the gaping hole in his chest.De Flers presses Ryno for the details of their life together during the past ten years but the dramatic story is better left for the viewer to discover. When the film returns to present time, de Marigny and Hermangarde are married and ostensibly in love, yet he struggles to keep his word to her grandmother by moving away from the temptations of Paris to a remote seacoast. The cigar-smoking temptress, however, also loves the fresh sea air and the stage is set for the film's final act. The Last Mistress is an outstanding work of art that is strengthened immeasurably by striking performances by Asia Argento and first-time actor Fu'ad Ait Aattou. Argento fully captures Vellini's sexual assertiveness but tempers her incendiary disposition with naturalism and a tenderness that makes us care about her fate.Aattou, discovered by Breillat in a crowded café, is almost feminine in appearance with overly thick lips and sensitive eyes, yet he brings a masculine determination to the role that makes him completely convincing. Like the recent film by Jacques Rivette, The Duchess of Langeais, in The Last Mistress love becomes a contest of wills, a power struggle between two people whose relationship consists of a tug of war not only between domination and submission but between 18th and 19th century social codes. That Breillat makes the ride so entrancing is a tribute to her enormous talent.

Its been awhile since I fell in love with a film, THE LAST MISTRESS reignited the flame. It is by far the best film yet of 2008. Few films can really develop the inexplicable magnetism of one person to another, the unbreakable bond that keeps them from drifting afar for too long. Its rare to experience, and difficult to understand. Somehow Breillat has brought to life a rich portrait of the love of a lifetime. Criticisms of pacing are way off, the performers are thinking, soaking in their melancholy and you track that sadness out of the theater in wet footprints. It was hard to leave the room when the credits were over, I wanted more of them, to believe in love no matter how much pain or consequence weathers its journey. Steadfast and true. One of the best female characters to date, and by far a groundbreaking performance from Argento! Rich, passionate, heartbreaking and Breillat's greatest success yet. This is film-making my friends! The younger ones may have trouble understanding or appreciating. For those of us still in love.

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.