The Last Mistress (2007)

I thought this movie was excellent, a wildly thrilling movie of temptation and passion, the acting of the main characters was superb. As Marigny is torn between his mistress Vellini and Wife Hermangarde, you can really feel the passions and despair of the heated love between Marigny and Vellini, its such a fantastic movie where the inner turmoil of the characters are communicated well and is a must see for anyone who enjoys such a delicious story. I think the tag line of this movie should have been: Will the crazy tainted furious love triumph or will the pure and innocent love prevail? watch the Une vieille maîtresse to find out!!

In 19th century Paris, a man about to marry recounts his life with a mistress. This is a good-looking costume drama, a lavish production. Unfortunately, it is a boring blab fest. While it's a love story between a man and woman, there is some gender bending going on here. With her hard, angular face, Agento looks like a man in drag, although there is ample evidence that she's 100% woman when undressed. With his soft, feminine face, Ait Aattou looks like a woman cross-dressed as a man. Both leads turn in inept performances. There is a scene involving their love child that is supposed to be tragic, but is laughably lame. Breillat has made some bad but provocative films. This one is simply bad.

I saw this movie this afternoon, and though at the end my watch assured me that it was less than 2 hours long, I had the impression I had sat through a verbatim reading of the entire 459 page novel. Endless dialogues in very literary French with the characters sitting down, filmed by a director who has no idea how to film dialogue, especially literary dialogue. The costumes were nice and so were the sets, but it reminded me of a very bad Masterpiece Theater episode.And it's a shame, because there was the makings here for a good movie (with another director). Most of the actors and actresses looked their parts, with the annoying exception of the male lead, who looked convincing at 20 but way too boyish - or girlish - for 30. The novel is interesting. (Though the premise is obvious and doesn't sustain almost 500 pages. The novel would be better known if it were a lot shorter.) A much better script could have been the basis for a good movie. (The script was evidently by the director.) And then there were the annoying small mistakes. Why, in the middle of a movie that sticks close to its historical period, c. 1835, do the characters do a rendition of a German popular song from the 1920s that sounds very 1920s? Why, at the opening of the movie, is the date 1835 given with the tag "the period of Choderlos de Laclos"? Laclos died in 1805 and his one remembered work, Les Liaisons dangereuses, dates from 1782. This story so very clearly dates from the Restoration and right after it, the period Balzac, Barbey's real contemporary, described so well in Eugénie Grandet, with its aristocracy moving ever further to a moral and sexual right wing - as we see in poor Ermangarde, who is afraid to enjoy sex.As I said, the acting here was fine, the sets and costumes ditto. But the dialogue was leaden as was the direction, and I found the male lead annoying.A major disappointment.

Greetings again from the darkness. I always get a kick out of the French cinematic view of love. Of course, there is always some single person we are meant for ... though endless lovers are expected. Somehow there is a soul mate and we always find that person not matter the pain caused to ourself or others.Director Catherine Breillat uses the transition of France from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth as the setting for this tale of "love" among the French upper crust. A cheap plot device - the ultimate detailed confession - provides the full guts of the story, both background and foreshadow.What made the film inaccessible for me were both lead actors, especially Asia Argento as Vellini (the last mistress). I just didn't find these people likable, whether together or apart. On the other hand, I did enjoy Michael Lonsdale as de Prony, and his wonderful dialogue and delivery.Mostly an uneventful couple of hours with no surprise ending at all.