The Last Mistress

CATHERINE Breillat looked frail but was as feisty as ever when she introduced the London Film Festival screening of The Last Mistress, writes Michael Dwyer.

THE LAST MISTRESS/UNE VIEILLE MAÎTRESSE

Directed by Catherine Breillat. Starring Asia Argento, Roxane Mesquida, Fu'ad Ait Aattou, Claude Sarraute, Michel Londsale, Anne Parillaud, Yolande Moreau Club, IFI, Dublin, 115 min  ***

In 2006 the French director suffered a cerebral haemorrhage that paralysed her left side, and she made her film, which she once planned to shoot in Ireland, in France.

Set in 19th-century Paris, it marks Breillat's first venture into costume drama. However, as she pointed out in London, "Sometimes there are no costumes," which is not at all unusual in a Breillat picture.

Although The Last Mistress is based on an 1851 novel regarded as scandalous in its time, the film is remarkably restrained by Breillat standards in terms of sexual explicitness. Her camera even takes time to admire the ornate costumes that cover the characters from neck to toe.

We're in Dangerous Liaisons territory here, not just in the story's era but in its primary themes of sexual desire and deceit. Virtuous heiress Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida) is betrothed to dissolute Ryno (Fu'ad Ait Aattou). Her grandmother, the Marquise de Flers (Claude Sarraute), intervenes out of her concern that Ryno is penniless and unlikely to end his notorious 10-year adulterous relationship with a Spanish courtesan, Vellini (Asia Argento).

The marquise feels reassured after Ryno details, in an extended flashback, his affair with Vellini. There remains the burning question if he will have the resolve to stay faithful or succumb again to the courtesan's controlling nature.

The first of Breillat's screenplays adapted from another source,

The Last Mistress is untypically loquacious. And, despite its elegantly captured period setting, it takes on a contemporary relevance as it addresses the conjunction of sex, power and money.

Argento, a rarely discriminating actress, is perfectly cast here as the manipulative Vellini, and the inexperience of androgynous newcomer Aattou enhances his vulnerability at her character's hands. In the movie's most startling scene, an example of vintage Breillat, Ryno is shot in a duel and Vellini rushes to his bed and feverishly licks his exposed wound.