It'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.
Comment
08/01/08
The Last Mistress (2008)
75
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:91
Fresh:68
Rotten:23
Average Rating:6.7/10
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 CriticLusty yet somewhat tepid French sex drama.
07/30/08
Cool, carnal, and lethal, The Last Mistress is a period drama with a difference.
07/25/08
There'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
Despite 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
A costume drama with an emphasis on costume over drama.
07/25/08
The cynicism and fire of the film all emerges from the heat of Asia Argento. In giving a truly fearless performance as the title character, she uses her body and audacity to tweak the upper-class society that can't take their eyes off her.
07/21/08
Asia 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 CriticAattou plays his role with the supreme self-confidence of a man in control, his deep blue eyes radiating calm, but Argento seems to know better. She is a wild, physical force, a primal fury who could only be resisted if she were to allow it.
07/18/08
[Breillat's] latest and possibly most entertaining exercise in erotica.
07/18/08
The Last Mistress is grindingly predictable, its view of sex as hand-to-hand combat (the lovers here assault each other like Sumo wrestlers) is often unintentionally funny and the casting is all wrong.
07/18/08
[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 CriticIf you like saucy period pieces, this is definitely for you.
07/18/08
Was that chicken really slaughtered on film?? Gorgeously photographed and provides enough suspense to hold you enthralled throughout.
07/18/08
Not the kind of period piece that you normally get from Catherine Breillat.
07/17/08
Lush. 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 CriticDamned if it doesn't suck you in like a late-night rerun of Rock of Love.
07/16/08
Slave to love... and pride... and obsession. And, Argento!
07/12/08
Latest News for The Last Mistress
May 25, 2008:
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