Today I was talking to my friend
Hannah McGill, creative director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, about what she was looking forward to seeing at Cannes Film Festival, which starts on Wednesday. One of the films she mentioned was
Catherine Breillat's
Une Vieille Maitresse (which roughly translates as
An Old Mistress). I had registered the fact that Breillat had a new movie at the festival, but not that it was a lavish period costume drama. And when I saw that
Twitch had put up a link to
the film's trailer, I became even more intrigued.
The plot of
Une Vieille Maitresse centers on a handsome young aristocrat Ryno De Marigny (
Fu'ad Ait Aattou) who shuns his longtime lover, courtesan Vellini (
Asia Argento), when he gets engaged to Hermangarde (Breillat's current muse,
Roxanne Mesquida), a marquis' daughter.
It's virgin territory for Breillat, who has never before made a historical film and for the most part has stuck to the intense, overtly sexual explorations of her own very modern feminist ideas. It will interesting to see how Cannes audiences respond to Breillat's unique interpretation of costume drama, particularly given what happened to
Sofia Coppola's infamous
Marie Antoinette - another revisionist take on French history starring Asia Argento as a prostitute - at last year's festival. (To put the record straight on
Marie Antoinette, another friend who was at the film's Cannes press screening informed me that the predominant reaction to the film was actually extremely positive, and that only a very small number of people booed.)
Although I have often struggled to relate to her worldview, I find Breillat fascinating as a filmmaker, and think her last two films, the self-reflecting
Sex is Comedy (riffing on
Truffaut's
Day for Night) and highly-charged two-hander
Anatomy of Hell, have been her most accomplished yet. Given how intimidating and self-assured her films are, I was pleasantly surprised to find her sweet and almost maternal when I interviewed her a few years ago. However it's unlikely that side of her personality will ever come through in her films. And probably a good thing too.
Comments (3)
I don't remember the priest telling me when I went to Confession when I was a kid, "Well, Lance, it was wrong of you to disobey your mom and talk back to her like that, but since you set the table every night and do your homework and sent your aunt a birthday card, what the heck! You're a good kid. Your sins are forgiven automatically. No need for you to do any penance." 文秘 心脑血管 糖尿病 高血压 糖尿病 高血脂 高脂血症 冠心病 心律失常 心肌病 心肌炎 中风 And maybe it's happened a few times and I haven't heard about it but I can't recall a judge ever letting somebody walk on the grounds the crook was a good guy and his friends really like him.
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posted by @ 5/15/2007 2:52 AM
Godard's Day for Night? Wrong director.
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posted by @ 5/15/2007 11:39 AM
You're making more sense than the other guy... Thanks for the spot.
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posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/15/2007 2:40 PM
