Last Sum­mer – first-look review

French provo­ca­teur Cather­ine Breil­lat is back with her first film in ten years. Adapt­ed from the 2019 Dan­ish film, Queen of Hearts, it is a dose of amus­ing hot trash in which a woman sim­ply can­not stop hav­ing sex with her step­son. 51-year-old Léa Druck­er plays Anne, a bril­liant lawyer whose job is to pro­tect chil­dren, unless they hap­pen to be Théo (Samuel Kircher), her husband’s pre­vi­ous­ly estranged 17-year-old son whose invi­ta­tion back into his dad’s life comes with a side of dan­ger­ous liaisons.

Adding a queasy lay­er to the film is the fact that Kircher, like his char­ac­ter, was 17 at the time of a shoot that fea­tures full-bore sex scenes with a woman three times his age. This review is writ­ten with an aware­ness that we may be hear­ing more from Kircher about the expe­ri­ence over the decades to come, echo­ing Car­o­line Ducey, the star of Breillat’s explic­it 1999 film Romance, who has gone pub­lic about her unpleas­ant expe­ri­ences on set.

Which isn’t to say that Last Sum­mer isn’t enter­tain­ing or nuanced. Anne is pre­sent­ed as a no-non­sense, bour­geois woman whose life all but gleams with respectabil­i­ty. Hus­band Pierre (Olivi­er Rabour­din) is pre­oc­cu­pied with work and their sex-life is com­fort­able rather than erot­ic. When he starts to touch her, she asks if he wouldn’t rather rest. When he per­sists, she mono­logues through the entire tryst, telling him that she likes his lived-in body that has lost its youth­ful firm­ness. Anne and Pierre have adopt­ed twin Asian-Amer­i­can girls whose hap­py ener­gy forms a pleas­ant, irrel­e­vant back­ground buzz.

Théo is intro­duced as a teenage tear­away, he has a police record and is antag­o­nis­tic towards his hith­er­to-absen­tee father. He and Anne’s illic­it bond begins after he breaks into the fam­i­ly home and lets the blame fall on anony­mous bur­glars. Anne fig­ures out that it was him, but agrees not to tell Pierre on the con­di­tion that he joins in with fam­i­ly life.

There fol­lows bucol­ic sequences that, at a squint, could pass as whole­some fam­i­ly bond­ing, as Anne, Théo and the twins go swim­ming in a riv­er. The cam­era alerts us to the fact that things are not pla­ton­ic by cap­tur­ing the main pro­tag­o­nists in such intense close-up that it is obscene – drink­ing in the freck­les that dot her entire body and fill­ing the frame with his quiv­er­ing scorn­ful mouth. 

There is a long build-up to their first kiss, and the sex­u­al ten­sion – I dear­ly regret to say – is pal­pa­ble. Although most audi­ence mem­bers will find their bod­ies scream­ing in objec­tion, the fact of the ini­tial trans­gres­sion makes sense on a pri­mal instinc­tu­al level.

Breil­lat utilis­es the gram­mar of com­e­dy, couch­ing this trou­bling affair as a big ​‘Yikes, I had sex with my step­son again’ while Druck­er draws on a hys­ter­i­cal­ly shifty mode of per­for­mance. She – alleged­ly a bril­liant lawyer – is moron­ic before Théo’s wild­card seduc­tive­ness. He is pre­sent­ed sole­ly through Anne’s eyes as, alter­nate­ly, irre­sistible and a dan­ger to the sta­bil­i­ty of her fam­i­ly life. We are nev­er invit­ed to see from his point of view. He is a cipher, a Loli­ta per­ceived by Hum­bert Hum­bert at his most deranged with arousal.

Although Breil­lat tells this tale through Anne’s eyes, she is not uncrit­i­cal of her lead­ing lady, reveal­ing her to be capa­ble of irre­deemable mon­stros­i­ty. Hints are scat­tered about the film of an ear­ly trau­ma that may have forged an ambiva­lent approach to sex. But details are delib­er­ate­ly left vague. 

Romance was about a young teacher com­pen­sat­ing for the lack of sex in her rela­tion­ship by enter­ing increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous sce­nar­ios with kinky strangers. Last Sum­mer is a com­pan­ion piece to this where the dan­ger comes not from ran­dom horn­dogs, but from the pro­fes­sion­al and domes­tic ruin that will fol­low if Anne’s liai­son with Théo becomes pub­lic knowledge.

Breil­lat rou­tine­ly kneecaps her own stakes by using out­ra­geous com­ic swerves that, while reap­ing the plea­sure of a shocked laugh, means that the film is eva­sive, avoid­ing tak­ing a posi­tion on its cen­tral rela­tion­ship beyond: these things can hap­pen. She is infa­mous for tak­ing a frank approach to taboo sub­jects so it tracks that she is still push­ing the bounds of con­ven­tion­al morality. 

In one scene, Anne is berat­ed by Pierre for not show­ing up to a social event with their friends. (She has been out get­ting drunk and flir­ty with Théo). With pure scorn, she barks back that she doesn’t care how things look to ​“norm­paths.” This line may as well be Breil­lat fir­ing ear­ly shots at crit­ics who ques­tion her pas­sion­ate depic­tion of a trou­bling rela­tion­ship. His­to­ry will be the judge of whether she comes out on top.