Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023) (Patreon)

We all know that the film industry and younger audiences are increasingly squeamish about overt depictions of sexuality on screen, so much so that Ira Sachs' Passages, a solid enough film on its own terms, was hailed by critics as something radical and transgressive, harking back to a freer time. Last year the discourse around the UCLA report and the Junior Anti-Sex League became unavoidable, and I'd like to think the semi-retired Catherine Breillat responded in true Eminem style. This looks like a job for me. And indeed, Last Summer's bold and unapologetic look at a married woman in her late 40s (Léa Drucker) starting a sexual relationship with her troubled stepson (Samuel Kircher), is genuinely refreshing in its honesty about the erotic pull of forbidden desires.

This may be one of Breillat's slyest films. For the viewer going in with no preconceptions, Last Summer has the trappings of a Téchiné-style memory piece, a look back at a pivotal moment when family dynamics and attachments were dispersed and reconfigured, in part owing to the bucolic setting and disruption of routine. Funny thing is, Last Summer is not not that, since all of those elements familiar from My Favorite Season and Wild Reeds do come into play. But given that this is Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer's rethink of the Danish film Queen of Hearts (which I have not seen), Last Summer foregrounds women's desire in a way we seldom see from Téchiné, or Chabrol, or even Rohmer. 

As has long been the case, Breillat is a savvy provocateur. She knows that she can get away with transgressions that a male director never could, and surely the particular draw of Queen of Hearts as a text was the older woman / young boy dynamic, again something that would be impossible to produce today if the genders were reversed. Still, Breillat is not simply out to provoke. Comparison with May December (another great film) is instructive, since Todd Haynes not only indemnified himself by basing his film on a true story, but made it clear even through the ironic distance that the teacher was a predator and the young man was indelibly scarred by the relationship. Only the most obtuse viewer could mistake depiction for endorsement.

By contrast, Last Summer addresses the consequences of Anne and Théo's affair only secondarily. What most interests Breillat is the overpowering, self-destructive urges at the heart of Anne's attraction. Last Summer is not just sexually frank. It shows Anne being so overcome with illicit randiness that she succumbs against her own conscious wishes. This cannot be separated from Anne's broader identity, as a reliable wife to a wealthy businessman (Olivier Rabourdin) and her role as an attorney specializing in helping underage rape and abuse victims. Anne's entire life is about overt competence, strength, and integrity. In her desire for Théo, she experiences not just the sexually forbidden ("Mommy? Sorry...mommy?") but the thrill of permanently destroying her life of control and dominance. 

Recall that when we see Anne and Pierre in bed together early in the film, he penetrates her while she narrates a memory that she has held onto as a fantasy. She describes being 14 and seeing an "old" male friend of her mother's, noticing how repulsive his aged body looked, but then gradually recognizing that this repulsion concealed attraction. (The punchline: "he was 34.") When Pierre worries that he is no longer attractive to Anne, she reassures him, "I've always been a gerontophile." So not only does Anne's sexual pleasure with her husband rely on turning the marital bed into a place of perversion. She can only get off by conceiving of herself as the pervert. (We could compare this obliquely with Maren Ade's Everyone Else. Anne has done the normal bourgeois thing, marrying an older, successful man. But she has to place that decision at a distance, as if she wasn't doing it "like that.")

If there is a significant hint of tragedy in Last Summer, it's that Anne is incapable of giving herself over to perverse desire. Yes, she wisely breaks off the affair, although Théo's crazed, vindictive actions make it seem like she may have miscalculated. But even when Théo tells his father that he's been sleeping with Anne, and he confronts her, she demonstrates how easy it is to gaslight both Pierre and, above all, Théo. Anne is in some ways worse that the dreaded "groomer;" she dips into transgression but always uses power and privilege to pull herself back out. She finds that, for both herself and for Pierre, it is much harder than she thought to actually blow up her life. Her investments in normalcy and reputation are too strong. So even though Anne does the "right thing" in terms of conventional morality (stops participating in pedophilic fauxcest), Breillat displays just how cowardly that decision really is, and how it's even more damaging for the young adult involved. It's an altogether more thorough form of victimization, coupled with an exploitation of gendered prerogative. After all, we're supposed to believe that the Théo will eventually look back on the experience and feel like a stud. That's the popular thinking. And if Théo cannot achieve that perspective, that just speaks to his inadequate masculinity, a failure far worse that Anne's.