bluebeard (w&d breillat)

This morning, in the Guardian, reading the obituary of Cecile Aubry, a little known French actress of the forties who married a Moroccan pasha and devised a TV show called Belle and Sebastian, I learn she "played Bluebeard's seventh wife as a sexy teenager, even performing a silhouetted striptease that left little to the imagination". This suggests that Bluebeard plays a larger role in French popular history than ours. In her film, Breillat employs a framing device of two young girls who find a copy of the fairy tale in a loft, and read it together, and perhaps generations of young girls have done the same in French attics, without the attendant dramatic consequences.

All of which implies that there may be levels to Breillat's interpretation of the fable which I am ignorant of. In her version, Bluebeard's wife is no ingenue, but a clear-headed young woman who knows exactly what she's up to. Breillat would also appear to be playing off her reputation, intimating the possibility of congress between beauty and the beast, something which the film then artfully steers away from. There's nothing in the film to frighten or disturb little girls, on the contrary, it's a highly empowering tale. Perhaps the abrupt conclusion of the secondary story is added to ensure a greater bite to the film. As it is, the most intriguing aspect of the beautifully filmed period narrative revolves around the dynamic of the two sisters, a dynamic which is interrupted by the younger's marriage to Bluebeard.

Having said which, there's still something remarkable about the way in which Breillat succeeds in creating a period drama which retains a naturalistic feel. This is not an artfully conceived world; the lack of CGI or big budgets helps to maintain a down-to-earthness which is completely convincing, and within this context the girls themselves feel modern, in spite of their period setting. This helps to make the film beguiling, and though slight, one can envisage it being viewed as something of a minor masterpiece. Nevertheless, it's hard not to hanker for the confrontational Breillat whose films stripped the veil of our modern day sexual mores; one hopes she's not in too much danger of mellowing.

the last mistress (d. catherine breillat)

There's something reassuringly old-fashioned about The Last Mistress. Whilst Breillat has established a reputation in previous films as a provocateur, this is a costume drama and love story. There's more rogueishness in an old lady's claim that she's from the 18th Century, not the 19th, and they did things differently back in the old days, than in any of the film's occasional sex scenes.

The film tells of the ten year love affair between Ryno de Marigny and Vellini, a sultry Malagan. There's is a tempestuous love-hate relationship. Despite the fact that Ryno marries the improbably beautiful Hermangarde, and they secrete themselves away in a castle on a rocky coast, the ghost of his former lover lurks in the wings. Ryno and Vellini's love story will never have a cheesy ending: if they seperate they would appear to be going against nature; if they are together it is in the face of society. Breillat's film has both a jaundiced and a celebratory take on love: it's a never ending chapter of accidents which inevitably leads to pain and suffering; but it's also the only thing which really makes life worth living. The apotheosis of love is sex, and whilst the sex scenes have no shock value at all, in contrast to the scenes which made the director's reputation in previous films, they reek of an overpowering intimacy which can only be achieved when minds, as well as bodies, meet.

Besides its take on love, The Last Mistress is also an old fashioned celebration of the beauty of its stars. Fu'ad Ait Aattou, as Ryno, is a man-boy, with ornate lips which the cinematography falls for in much the same way as his future grandmother does, as she listens, sprawled in her armchair, to the tale of his love affair with Vellini. Roxane Mesquida, as Hermangarde, has the kind of radiance which some thought had died on a cliff with Grace Kelly. And as Vellini, Asia Argento once again shows her star quality: a quality that comes about not so much as a result of the talent of the acting, but a force of personality that seems to travel out of the screen, borne on rays of transparent light.

Breillat's film luxuriates in all this, as do the three older characters who punctuate the story, leeching life vicariously from the travails of the young. The perfunctory ending seems to suggest that the narrative, whilst intruiging, is not of such great import. What counts is the ceaseless game of love. There's a hint of Swann and Odette, another great Parisian love story, in Ryno's passion for Vellini. The Last Mistress makes no pretensions to be avant garde and breaks no taboos. Rather, it draws its strength from what is timeless, capturing emotions from the past which are as powerful now as they were then, and will always be.