Directed by Catherine Breillat ◆ Written by Catherine Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer ◆ Produced by Saïd Ben Saïd ◆ Distributed by Pyramide Distribution
French director Catherine Breillat is known for pushing the limits of cinema. Her films most often explore desire and sexuality from a female perspective—a female gaze, as it were. In her film Romance (2000), Breillat took her exploration of eros even further, into the realm of pornography. The film became notorious for featuring real, unsimulated sex acts.
In her first film in a decade, Breillat leads her audience down a different, more restrained path. This time, the cinematic shock comes from the interiority of desire rather than explicit eroticism.
Last Summer tells the story of Anne (Léa Drucker), a lawyer representing young female clients who were raped or sexually and physically abused. Her husband, Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), is a businessman who often travels for his work. The couple adopted two little girls and live quite comfortably in an idyllic country mansion just outside of Paris.
Pierre appears to be more invested in giving the girls his presence, care, and love. Anne is not completely shut off from her daughters, but she is distant. Like any family, they have a certain routine to their lives, which is punctuated by bourgeois, perfunctory domesticity. Even the couple’s lovemaking is portrayed as just another occasion to talk about boring business meetings.
This outwardly idyllic life is interrupted by the arrival of Pierre’s 17-year-old son, Théo (Samuel Kircher), who is from Pierre’s first marriage. Théo is a typical dissatisfied youth. He doesn’t care much for his father, he is distant from his mother, and is headed for juvenile delinquency. Pierre’s first wife doesn’t know what to do with the boy, and so Théo moves from Geneva to Paris.
Anne is at first reluctant to take him in, but she realizes that Pierre is conflicted and uneasy about his role as Théo’s father. Perhaps there is a possibility for closeness between father and son, and living at their home might prove to be a positive experience. Théo wants to rebel against both his father and stepmother, but his dissatisfaction seems rooted more in ordinary youthful rebellion rather than anything specific to his own life.
Breillat immediately creates an uneasy suggestion of strange closeness between Anne and Théo. Instead of keeping things maternal, Anne’s gaze begins to focus on Théo’s body. One of the first things Anne notices is how much Théo has grown. Is she taken by his youth or is there something specific about Théo that she perversely finds attractive? Kircher’s appearance brings to mind Tadzio, a young Polish boy who is the object of desire in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971). Both boys have flowing blond hair, perfectly symmetrical facial features, and bodies like marble statues. In Visconti’s film, it is Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) who becomes obsessed with Tadzio, calling into question his intent: is it a mere admiration of beauty or something far more perverse?
Here, Breillat plays with both possibilities. In the beginning, it’s not entirely clear who is seducing whom. Like a mother, Anne cleans Théo’s clothes and cooks meals, yet there is something else beneath the surface. At the same time, Théo proclaims, “I am not a kid,” and Anne sees this as an affirmation of her already-formed thoughts about him.
Breillat’s choice of nude and sex scenes between Anne and Théo takes a different turn from her direction in Romance (2000). Instead of focusing her camera on bodies during the scenes, Breillat makes us see their faces. The face of eros is far more
difficult to capture, and it is clear from the scenes that Anne’s marital transgressions are utterly unerotic. She is hardly experiencing some kind of orgasmic paroxysm that she never found with Pierre. Instead, her face conveys distance and even boredom. During their pillow talk, she willingly engages in silly questions Théo poses about her favorite color. She even reveals her biggest fear, which is for her to do everything she can to make everything disappear. “It’s my vertigo theory,” she speaks into Théo’s dictaphone, “vertigo isn’t fear of falling; it’s fear of irrepressible temptation to fall.” The childlike look on Théo’s face reveals his innocence—he does not comprehend Anne’s words.
Anne never allows herself to be fully vulnerable during these moments, always trying to maintain control. Her control begins to unravel, however, as she tries to end her relationship with Théo. “There is no us,” she says coldly, and Théo cries. At that moment, she is the predator, the masculine aggressor, and Théo is a feminized innocent. Whether he understands it or not, Théo is experiencing love and heartbreak. Anne’s female gaze was never really about love. Like a predatory feline, she treads ever so gently a few steps ahead of Théo and the rest of the world.
Things become darker when Théo decides to tell his father about the affair. Pierre confronts Anne, and for a moment she shows the guilt and fear of being reprimanded. She becomes a child who is about to be admonished and possibly even punished. But soon after Pierre confronts her with the facts, she becomes utterly indignant, denying allegations, and calling Théo a monster. Pierre is confused. He doesn’t know whom to believe.
Who is Anne? Is she just a bored wife? Breillat is distant from the objects of her camera. She does not seem to impart any judgment except that she allows her camera to show the absurdity of aging female desire. Anne is not simply a woman who needs to “get her groove back,” to use that superficial American expression. In Breillat’s presentation, desire and eros are something far more complex than the saga of a woman dealing with getting older.
Breillat’s aesthetic choice of eschewing her usual explicit nudity makes Last Summer an even more powerful film. The film’s depiction of sexual desire revolves around the concept of the nude rather than the naked. To be naked is to not be clothed, which is easily shown in film. It’s harder to film nudity, which contains a sense of vulnerability.
This vulnerability is the human aspect that Anne sorely lacks. Théo repeatedly engages her in conversations and encounters that would elicit vulnerability and some revelation of Anne’s true self. But Anne refuses to participate. To do that it would mean giving up her power, especially the kind she wields over Théo. Instead, she chooses to mask her existence. This “duplication of masks,” to use Nietzsche’s phrase, is evident in Anne’s perpetual retraction and abdication of moral responsibility. She is clearly unsure of who she is and has let the superficiality of existence govern her daily life.
She’s aware of the boredom of her life with Pierre, which includes their associations with others. One evening, Anne and Pierre are entertaining guests. The conversation is hardly sparkling and Anne thinks she is above it all. She is more than this upper-class tedium, forced to listen to dumb and meaningless stories that take her away from the excitement of her affair.
Anne happily escapes her guests by joining Théo on a trip into town. She is like a teenage girl discovering love, but there is something about her state of mind that is incongruous and contradictory. Anne and Théo go to a bar and attempt to have an honest conversation about love, sex, and relationships. The entire exchange is incredibly awkward. Anne is not at peace and certainly not comfortable in her own skin. Both she and Théo are aware that there is something more at play here. After all, why would a stepmother and stepson go to a bar and discuss sex?
This moment is as far as Anne gets in revealing something about her background. She is a product of a mother who came from the “free love” generation of the 1960s, but Anne herself is of the “AIDS generation,” when sex became an object of fear and terror. Is this supposed to be the reason why Anne is seeking a passionate life? Most likely not, because on another occasion, she reveals that the most difficult thing in her life was the realization that she would not be able to conceive children because of a botched abortion. Although there is regret in her voice and something akin to the feelings of lost motherhood, Anne quickly switches into the role of a cold, self-serving woman. She was and remains a predator of sexual domesticity.
Breillat leaves clues throughout the film suggesting various aspects of Anne’s interior life despite the fact that she is a character who is difficult to know. In one scene, Anne lies in bed alone and above her hangs a painting of a nude woman, also lying in bed. The woman’s expression is slightly submissive, eliciting an invitation to an erotic experience, and yet she also appears listless and bored. Her face shows neither happiness or joy, nor anger or frustration; she is entirely in control of her emotions. Despite her nakedness, she is not vulnerable at all, and her face is that of a woman who is not interested in knowing herself or others. The painting replicates Anne’s disposition and condition.
Last Summer is not a film that invites many viewings. Everything is revealed upon a first showing and the existential and cinematic layers reach their limit. However, Breillat’s film is a superb example of what happens when a woman inhabits the action of the “male gaze.” Predatory seduction knows no gender. It is simply a matter of infinite regress of immorality masking as false eros and false domesticity.
Leave a Reply