DIABOLIQUE
Feel your sex life needs a little pick-me-up? You could do worse than seek inspiration in current films. If the lust in
Ang Lee's Lust/Caution" floats your boat, better prepare first with yoga asanas and the Pilates "plough" position -- the pretzel shapes of Lee's lovers demand flexibility. For a peppering of perversity, check out
Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales from NYFF 45, and the stuff a feral
Asia Argento gets up to with her doggie. Asia's also an inspiration in the NYFF's
The Last Mistress by
Catherine Breillat, drinking her wounded lover's blood as a little amuse-bouche. The main course includes a memorable cantilevered arrangement that would have delighted
Aero Saarinen. Moroccan model-turned-actor,
Fu-ad Aait Attou, Asia's partner in lust, is an inspiration in himself. Green eyes, lusher lips than Angie's.
Hell-raiser Catherine Breillat was on hand at the NYFF press screening of "Mistress" to discuss such carnal concerns, along with the 19th century French ideal of the androgynous, dandified male. Her film doubtless competed for a slot in the fest with
Jacques Rivette's equally superb
Don't Touch the Axe, but the committee must have chosen not to include two films so close in spirit. Both anatomize sexual power duels-to-the-death – or what a character in the Rivette calls, when he decides to humble his cock-teasing mistress, "steel against steel."
Adapted from a novel by Catholic bad boy
Barbey d'Aurevilly, "Mistress" probes the dilemma of Ryno de Marigny (Attou), an aristo as dishy as he is dissolute, who wants to clean up his act by marrying beautiful monied Hermangarde. Only one problem: he can't totally say adios to La Vellini (Asia) a Spanish courtesan and his mistress of ten years. (French tutorial: the original title "Une Vieille Maitress" has two meanings; vieille can mean "former" -- ironic, since Ryno can't give her up; it also means "old" – and in fact, Asia looks kind of skanky and worn – Ryno calls her "that mutt" -- in contrast to blooming blonde Hermangarde. So with beautiful French economy the title conveys the notion that desire ain't necessarily tied to youth and beauty – end of lesson).
At the press screening, viewers seemed taken with "Mistress," and in fact, though a costumer, in many ways the film plays modern. Love as power politics resonates today, along with the film's pokes at chronic male infidelity. So does the notion of fluid gender. As Breillat observed in the Q & A, the 1830's idealized the figure of the dandy, when "les garcons sont un peu filles et les filles sont un peu hommes" (and if you don't know French, tough luck). Ryno and La Vellini switch roles; he's more the adored object, she the active lover. After Ryno marries, she shows up to seduce him smoking a cigar. As Vellini says, "I detest anything feminine, except in young men."
But on some level Americans will just go, huh? "Mistress" is so Gallic, in the way it prioritizes sexual desire, practically elevating it to a lifetime achievement, and assuming its longevity. It also celebrates the femme fatale, while American -- at least studio films -- demonize her, think
Glenn Close. Nor will Yanks have a stomach for Barbey D'Aurevilly's taste for transgression, his pairing of desire and death. I seem to remember a story from his
Les Diaboliques, in which one or both lovers are killed by sex.
But oh how reassuring to see Breillat, who recently suffered a stroke, in such good form. Ready in the Q & A to field any question. Like when a guy asked, "Why do we only hear the sounds of the woman during orgasm?" Breillat, not missing a beat: "Rien n'est plus beau qu'une femme qui jouit." Modesty prevents me from translating.
# posted by Erica Abeel @ 10/11/2007 05:25:00 PM
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