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Breillat: "Last Summer"

 I have no idea if Catherine Breillat likes "Fatal Attraction," but I myself am a fan, and it's fun to see Breillat "updating" FA in her new film.


A woman (Anne) in her late forties has a reasonably happy life; she lives in comfort outside Paris, and she has two adorable adopted children. Her husband, Pierre, probably talks too much, and too dryly, about business, but that seems to be a small price to pay. And: Act One ends. A stranger comes to town.

The stranger, Theo, is Pierre's own son from an earlier marriage. Theo resents Pierre for having jumped ship. Theo also recognizes that he has sexual power over Anne, and he begins an affair, maybe to screw with his dad, maybe because of actual romantic feelings, and maybe because of a jumble of unexamined, chaotic impulses. (Theo is just seventeen.)

What follows is a power struggle. It's excruciating to watch. Anne knows she needs to disentangle herself from Theo, but she can't help herself; she is drawn to self-sabotage. Theo is wounded, and young, and stupid, but he figures out how to use the law, the clock, and the weight of family history to his own advantage. You begin to feel that the central characters (or at least a few) literally might not survive to play a role in the Third Act.

All of this is like witnessing a slow-motion trainwreck. Breillat makes things squirmier than you might expect. I'm haunted by Anne--and by her fate. And I recommend this one.

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