This is how a Breillat film works: The images are stark, the morality murky. An uncomfortable film even by her own standards (see “Fat Girl,” “The Sleeping Beauty”), this dread-soaked spellbinder follows the arc of Anne and Théo’s relationship from the day the boy moves in to a grim (and ill-conceived) denouement.
Jeanne Lapoirie, the cinematographer, toys with our perception of the leads’ ages, occasionally bathing Drucker in a flattering golden light that makes her look 25, then minutes later shooting her to look harsh and pinched, every one of her 52 years plus another dozen. The shots are stern and composed, but the pace moves at a clip, breathlessly vaulting days or weeks or months without explanation. (When Anne chirps that it’s Christmas, we’re completely caught off-guard — she’s still wearing a sleeveless dress?) The screenplay by Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer forces the audience to play catch-up, filling in the gaps with our own sense of what’s happening and why characters are doing things they shouldn’t.
“Last Summer,” which premiered in competition at last year’s Cannes, is a largely faithful adaptation of the Danish filmmaker May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts,” released in 2019. Some dialogue is near-identical, as is Anne’s job as — irony alert — a prosecutor on behalf of sexually and physically assaulted minors, a tidy bit of hypocrisy that feels as narratively shallow as that high school movie tic where teachers serve as a Greek chorus describing the plot.
El-Toukhy’s version was a coldhearted crime story about a predator and her prey; Breillat flips the boy into the pursuer, grinding dirt and grime into the distinction of who is most to blame. Her Théo is an aggressive, callow, reckless, boundary-pushing cad who brings oodles of baggage into the family’s posh manor, including resentment that his father, Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), ditched him for Anne and an adorable set of adopted twins (Serena Hu and Angela Chen). Théo’s no old soul — he’s not even mature for his age — and he isn’t particularly kind or interesting or intelligent. But his disaffected cool digs under Anne’s skin. She needs his approval.
To be clear: Breillat isn’t justifying Anne’s affair or, on a larger scale, telling a story with any universal resonance. She’s exploring how this particular sinner did the unforgivable — and then committed even more sins trying to cover it up. Anne herself, whom Drucker plays with frightening conviction, is too shortsighted and manipulative to say anything we’d believe. What values she claims to respect — honesty, for one — she winds up debasing.
Instead, Breillat listens for the bits of Anne’s biography that casually dribble out: a childhood crush on her mother’s adult friend, a virginity story she doesn’t want to share, a muffled dissatisfaction that her older husband Pierre and his friends have grown dull and square. (“Normopaths,” she sneers.) No one talks about money, but it’s a constant hiss, particularly in the tension between Anne, a striver who married rich, and her sister Mina (Clotilde Courau), a nail technician who judges her destructive sibling twofold for risking her comfortable life.
This is not a love story, and the film flails whenever it suggests even earnest infatuation between the pair. Breillat’s scalpel is sharpest whenever she digs for the broken parts in Anne’s soul that Théo’s flattery momentarily heals. Anne’s feelings — not his — take center stage, and her disastrous choices increasingly make us despise her. By the time Anne sputters, “Legally, that’s not incest!” this self-deluded lawyer knows she’s got no defenses left.
Unrated. At AFI Silver. Contains mature themes, nudity and sexual situations. 104 minutes.
