The last mistress

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Movie
German title The last mistress
Original title Une vieille maîtresse
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2007
length 114 minutes
Rod
Director Catherine Breillat
script Catherine Breillat
production Jean-François Lepetit
music Classic music
camera Yórgos Arvanítis
cut Pascale Chavance
occupation

The French feature film The Last Mistress was directed in 2007 by Catherine Breillat ; it was her first costume drama. And for the first time she wrote the script not from her own story, but from the novel of the same name by Barbey d'Aurevilly (1851). The love story is about two people who, despite all the difficulties inherent in their relationship, cannot get away from each other. In 1835 it is settled in the idle Parisian nobility and upper bourgeoisie, the locations are parks, salons and bedchamber. Asia Argento and Fu'ad Aït Aattou play the leading roles . In supporting and minor roles, Breillat features many actresses who had lead roles in their earlier films, such as Lio , Caroline Ducey , Roxane Mesquida , Sarah Pratt , Anne Parillaud and Amira Casar . The 7 million euro work was premiered in the 2007 Cannes competition .

action

The young Hermangarde, granddaughter of the Marquise de Flers, languishes for the 30-year-old noblewoman Ryno de Marigny and intends to marry him. A friend of the Marquise, the Comtesse d'Artelles, draws her attention to the fact that Marigny is a well-known, unprofessional, poor man. Artelle's companion Vicomte de Prony watches Marigny go to the house of the Spanish courtesan Señora Vellini. In high society, Marigny and Vellini are known to have had a relationship for ten years.

The Marquise de Flers, who means everything to her granddaughter, confronts Marigny in private. For one night he tells her about ten years with Vellini, from which he has now separated. How he met her at a party held by his friend Comte de Mareuil, how he vied for her and she succumbed to him, how he dueled her husband Sir Reginald and was injured on her account, how Vellini got divorced and the couple moved to Algeria. There Vellini gave birth to a daughter who was killed by a scorpion. The death of the child led to anger, hatred and violence between them, yet they never completely broke away from each other. Gradually Marigny distanced himself from Vellini; they separated and lived in what Marigny considered friendship. According to this report, de Flers gives the marriage her blessing. After the marriage, Marigny and Hermangarde move to the Breton coast with de Flers and d'Artelles because Marigny does not want to be tempted in Paris. However, Vellini soon followed suit and he met her secretly. Hermangarde's pregnancy doesn't stop him either. He confesses to holding on to Hermangarde like a drowning man on a plank. His wife notices Vellini's presence and sees him through a window while communicating with her. She accepts his infidelity with resignation and loses her child. They return to Paris, where they continue their married life, but Marigny regularly visits Vellini.

Origin and occupation

The budget for the production was 7 million euros, which, according to Breillat, was more than she had available for her last ten films together. She attached great importance to authenticity in the costumes and the fabrics used for them, and stubbornly refused suggestions to save money. However, the performance of the song “Yes, Sir!” (In German) within the plot is historically incorrect; Ralph Benatzky composed this title almost exactly a century later for Zarah Leander . Since Breillat had suffered a stroke a year before shooting began and had to learn to walk and speak again, the insurance company demanded that a replacement director be available. At all locations she had a mattress available to rest in between.

Breillat described the leading actress Asia Argento as the tree that should hide the forest of little-known actors behind it. She did not share the views on sexuality that Argento expressed in her directorial work, and these would have had no bearing on her cast. She spotted the male lead actor Fu'ad Aït Aattou , who is of Berber descent, in a café. She immediately saw in him the ideal Marigny. She told him not to hang out with the others during breaks. Since he locked himself in to learn his text by heart, he was not popular. In her opinion, he carries the film: “As soon as he is not there, you get bored. Incidentally, I cut out certain scenes because it wasn't there. He is the strand of the film, its flame, its light. The artistic gaze, like the love gaze, transfigured: One transforms the other as one wishes to see him. ”The Cahiers du cinéma critic Jean-Philippe Tessé appears in a supporting role ; Breillat said that he discovered him on the street and only then found out about his job.

Subjects and form

In a couple relationship, according to Catherine Breillat, the man is first the stronger one, who brings out his desires and masculinity, but in the course of the love relationship he becomes the weaker one. "The woman takes on the superior position by humanizing the man who moves away from the animal". The story does not go into the causes and motives of the bond between Marigny and Vellini. It remains to be seen to what extent Marigny and Vellini love each other or to what extent, after mutual provocations, they decided to play love. But the relationship develops its own momentum. "The passion? A black hole, an emptiness that soaks up everything, that crushes everything. "

In the contrast shown between the sensual, vulgar Vellini and the virginal, noble Hermangarde, the story continues the old division into whore and saint. Thanks to Hermangarde, Marigny can improve his social position and has the upper hand in his relationship with her, while he is at the mercy of Vellini's attraction. “He constantly returns to Vellini's wild spirit and carnal pleasures, visibly to conquer, but also to be conquered. As a couple, Ryno and Vellini come close to an ideal mix of masculine and feminine, body and soul, but society will not approve of their unconventional passion and they will be exiled in the Algerian desert. ”In the end, Hermangarde is in the role of the virtuous wife trapped while Vellini is sexually fulfilled but socially ostracized.

Breillat shows the burning passion that Marigny and Vellini feel for one another, hardly in their full development, but in decline and as an afterglow. The characters around the lovers - de Flers, d'Artelles and de Prony - take part in the action as outside voyeurs and listeners. With their humor and their lightness, they outweigh the passionate seriousness of the tragic couple. The Marquise de Flers sinks comfortably in the armchair when Marigny tells her about his past with Vellini. In keeping with this attitude, the staging of the film remains at a distance and observing coolly, does not use any extradictive music and only simple, pure images. Instead of the long shots that are common in costume dramas, which expand the splendor of the equipment, the camera prefers to get close to the faces. Known for her almost pornographic depictions of sexuality, Breillat said of the love scenes in The Last Mistress: "I wanted the film to be broadcast at 8:30 p.m. and to expand my audience."

criticism

According to the judgment of the Cahiers du cinéma , the director is cheeky with the novel, because: “Breillat has found the freedom in tone that she had in the 1980s: this prosaic staging, direct and open, where the nature of the actors to it invites you to do violence to the faithful ”. The director is now free to mix the two sources from which she has drawn in her work. Realism is repeatedly covered with a dreamlike unreality; "The symbol gnaws the real, devours it". For Le Monde , The Last Mätresse is a story of sudden rawness and sensuality. Breillat surrenders wholeheartedly to the fascination to which she induces Asia Argento and throws the young Fu'ad Aït Aattou to her to eat. However, she did not know what to do with the aristocratic world and did not anchor Marigny and Vellini in it. In addition, she handles parts of the film differently, for example, leaving the conversations between the ladies de Flers and d'Artelles to the actresses, who cheerfully pull them into gossip.

The German press discussed the film, which did not go to cinemas in Germany, on the occasion of the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. Cristina Nord from taz was pleased to note that Breillat had stopped trying to “proclaim eternal certainties about the opposing nature of man and woman ". She staged much more subtly than in earlier works, "imaginative, confident and interwoven in an interesting way". Support her Asia Argentos "fearlessness, her drive and her self-confidence". On Spiegel Online , Lars-Olav Beier was disappointed that not even Breillat was able to remedy the lack of eroticism in the Cannes vintage and left it with “a crackling open fire as an erotic metaphor”: “One has the feeling that Breillat, an expert on without -Costume films, was not the ideal cast for this stuffy literary film adaptation. ” Michael Althen measured Breillat's film on dangerous love affairs (1989) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . The challenge would have been to surpass this, but her film remains “rigid as a stick despite certain sexual freedoms”. A danger would never be felt in the love affairs shown by Breillat. Tobias Kniebe ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) commented on Breillat's foray into the historical world of novels: “Breillat finds the present in this material and makes it tangible, but she doesn't seem to feel quite comfortable in the new environment yet.” But Argento “rushes with all her energy ”into her role.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Douglas Keesey: Catherine Breillat . Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-7190-7530-8 , p. 153
  2. ↑ a b Catherine Breillat in Positif, p. 24
  3. ↑ The song was part of the film To New Shores (1937)
  4. ↑ Keesey 2009, pp. 159-160
  5. ↑ Catherine Breillat in Positif , p. 22
  6. ↑ Catherine Breillat in Positif, p. 25
  7. ↑ Catherine Breillat in Positif , pp. 22-23
  8. ↑ Catherine Breillat in Positif, p. 23
  9. ↑ Catherine Breillat in conversation with Positif, June 2007, p. 21: Entretiens avec Catherine Breillat. On doit brûler pour l'art
  10. ↑ a b c Fabien Baumann: Une vieille maîtresse . In: Positif, No. 556, June 2007, pp. 19-20
  11. ↑ Keesey 2009, p. 154
  12. ↑ Keesey 2009, p. 157
  13. ↑ Keesey 2009, p. 159
  14. ↑ a b Arnaud Macé: Récit d'amour et cri du désir . In: Cahiers du cinéma , May 2007, pp. 42–43
  15. ↑ Keesey 2009, p. 154
  16. ↑ Thomas Sotinel: Catherine Breillat ravive la guerre des sexes . In: Le Monde, May 28, 2007, p. 19
  17. ↑ Cristina Nord: The idiosyncratic queen of Cannes . In: the daily newspaper , May 26, 2007, p. 20
  18. ↑ Lars-Olav Beier : Finally sex! Or not? In: Spiegel Online, May 25, 2007
  19. ↑ Michael Althen: The stars, they shone over southern France . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, May 27, 2007, p. 34
  20. ↑ Tobias Kniebe: Asia belongs to the night . Cannes report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 26, 2007, p. 15