Argento seizes each scene with both hands, adding surprising layers of feeling as she goes.
Comment
10/18/08
The Last Mistress (2008)
90
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:19
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.6/10
Consensus: More complicated than your average bodice ripper, Catherine Breillat's Last Mistress features beautiful costumes, wrought romances, and a feral performance from Argento.
Theatrical Release:Jun 27, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $621,567
Synopsis: Controversial director Catherine Breillat (ROMANCE, FAT GIRL) delivers her most ambitious film yet with THE LAST MISTRESS. Adapted from the novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, the film is set in... [More]
Starring: Asia Argento, Fu'ad Ait Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute
Director: Catherine Breillat
Reviews for The Last Mistress
Top CriticIt's devastating.
10/18/08
Top Critic[An] entertaining, elegantly shot adaptation of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's 19th century novel.
10/18/08
Top CriticIt's characteristic of the virtues and limitations of French sexual provocateur Catherine Breillat...that they usually derive from the same source--the fearless determination to skirt the borders of camp.
08/01/08
Top CriticCool, carnal, and lethal, The Last Mistress is a period drama with a difference.
07/25/08
Top CriticThere's a brittle pomp and circumstance to The Last Mistress, which suddenly turns into a sensual witch's dance, once star Asia Argento is let loose about a third of the way into the film.
07/25/08
Top CriticDespite an austere budget and some minor anachronisms, The Last Mistress proves that Breillat has found something in the luscious language of the 19th century that makes sense to us today.
07/25/08
Top CriticA costume drama with an emphasis on costume over drama.
07/25/08
Top CriticAsia Argento, as Vellini, is a firebrand, a woman who is attractive even in non-seductive moments when she is angry or downcast or 'off-stage.'
07/21/08
Top Critic[Breillat] is inviting us to really look at sex as it occurs in life, and to engage with it mentally, as a driving mystery of human existence.
07/18/08
Top CriticThe sex, like almost everything else in The Last Mistress, is mechanical.
07/18/08
Top CriticIt is Claude Sarraute's performance that I love most of all in the film. I can easily imagine spending the night in the salon of this old lady, and telling her everything she wants to hear.
07/18/08
Top CriticLush. Debauched. Ravishing. And did I mention sexy? The Last Mistress, from French controversialist Catherine Breillat, is Dangerous Liaisons, uncorseted and undressed.
07/17/08
Top CriticMs. Breillat has forgone the anarchic force of her earlier forays into the still relatively underdeveloped realm of female sexuality. As a pioneer of sorts in her field, she has earned this temporary respite of classicism represented by The Last Mistress.
07/09/08
Top CriticThe sumptuous costumes and florid dialogue in The Last Mistress represent early-19th-century French custom at its most curlicued, but the power of one woman's molten sexuality is timeless in Catherine Breillat's rich drama.
07/03/08
Top CriticAs gorgeous-looking as the picture is, you could never accuse Breillat of anything so banal as good taste.
06/27/08
Top CriticThe most overtly sensual film to come our way of late.
06/27/08
Top CriticThough Argento and Aattou lack the searing chemistry needed, the social politics are consistently intriguing, and everything -- not to mention everyone -looks absolutely stunning.
06/27/08
Top CriticIn The Last Mistress, the director Catherine Breillat’s explorations of desire are so far from the antiseptic world of most screen depictions as to seem far out.
06/27/08
Top CriticHighly entertaining.
06/25/08
Top CriticLatest News for The Last Mistress
May 25, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review 
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