Last Summer (2023): Catherine Breillat’s Almost Audacious Tale of Taboo Romance, Starring Léa Drucker

Last Summer
Last Summer
	Theatrical release poster

World-premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Fest, Last Summer was well received by most critics, earning four nominations at the 49th César (French Oscars) Awards.

Starring then superb vet actress Léa Drucker and handsome newcomer Samuel Kircher in a splashy debut, the film explores the taboos of a stepmother–stepson relationship.

Anne (Drucker) is a middle-aged respected lawyer, who’s presumably engaged in a happy life with her husband Pierre and their two young daughters.

Things change when Théo (Samuel Kircher), Pierre’s adolescent son from a previous marriage, moves in, resulting in a sexual tension between him and Anne.

The film’s first (and best) reel explores the sexual attraction, first atent, then more explicit, step-by step.

Anne eventually submits to his overtures, beginning a lusty affair, thus risking losing her career and as well as her family.

Breillat seems more concerned with the POV of Théo, a sensitive, fragile boy of 17, who throws himself completely into a liaison hat proves self-destructive.

It was good to see Breillat’s comeback–artistic self-renewal–with Last Summer, her fifteenth feature, and her first since her autobiographical drama, Abuse of Weakness, of ten years earlier.

The film poses such provocative questions as, “Is it love or just carnal lust? Where does love stop? Where does transgression begin?” without ever being preachy or moralistic.

However, Last Summer is outdated and too simple as an exploration of unbridled lust–the subject is no longer a shocking taboo story. In 1971, Louis Malle probed an actual incest between mother and son in his superb film, Murmur of the Heart (“Le Souffle au Coeur”), starring another Lea, Massari (of L’Avventura fame) and Benoit Ferreux (who was 15 at the time).

For a bold director like Breillat (who has made the more audacious Romance, Fat Girl and Anatomy of Hell, among others), Last Summer is a rather tame, quite predictable family melodrama. She works hard but none too convincingly in maintaining a balanced perspective, in which both step mother and step son come across as sympathetic humans figures; neither is complex or troubling enough to merit our serious consideration.

Also disappointing, especially by Breillat’s own standards, is the visual depiction of the sexual acts. The first, coming at the film’s 40 minute point, is a lengthy scene, focusing on Theo’s face, in mega close-ups; we get the impression that it’s his first orgasm. The second and third reverse the angles, and alongside heavy breathing of both actors, the camera lingers on and on Anne’s face (during and after the intercourse).

The character of the husband, Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin) is too underdeveloped to make the movie a compelling triangle story. There’s never a sense of how sexually viable the marriage was before Theo’s appearance, and Pierre may be too caring and sensible once the affair becomes public knowledge.

In other words, Breillat seems unable to sustain the sexual suspense and erotic excitement that prevailed in the first act. Ultimately, her movie is oddly muted and does not really defy moral or narrative boundaries.

What You Need to Know:

The 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts was directed by May el-Toukhy, who co-wrote it with Maren Louise Kaëhne

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was initially cast in role of Anne before being replaced by Léa Drucker. Samuel Kircher, son of actors Irène Jacob and Jérôme Kircher, makes an impressive, prize-winning debut as the teenage stepson Théo. Samuel was recommended to Breillat by his brother Paul, who was originally scheduled to play the role.

In the press interview, Drucker described Last Summer as “one of the most disturbing films” in which she has ever acted, sort of a companion piece to the Scottish dramatist David Harrower’s play “Blackbird,” in which she had starred on stage. (“Blackbird” concerns a young woman who meets a middle-aged man fifteen years after being sexually abused by him when she was twelve.)

Last Summer (2023): Catherine Breillat’s Almost Audacious Tale of Taboo Romance, Starring Léa Drucker

What You Need to Know:

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