Last Summer - Movie Review

it should come as no surprise to those familiar with the work of French provocator Katherine Brea that her latest film last summer her first in more than 10 years might just be the most controversial film we'll get this year and yet this latest work of provocation might just be her most mannered film to date at least on the surface in a filmography defined by audacious explorations of varying tabos and transgressions none of her films ever feel one and the same you can single out one from throughout her 50-year career whether it's fat girl anatomy of Hell romance or a real young girl and you'll find works that utilize singular angles genres and perspectives to poke and prod at the things deemed forbidden but I guess the one through line of her entire career is that aiding desire to toy with and go beyond our comfort levels and her latest shows that even at the age of 75 she's not done with the provoking just yet Brea drops us into Last Summer with the stern steady gaze of Anne played by Leia drer a respected lawyer who specializes in cases concerning abused miners she's prepping a young client on how her as salance defense team will play the old [ __ ] shaming trick we see in her professional life an as a champion of the young and vulnerable a strong steady woman who puts up with nothing but soon thereafter we get a glimpse into her personal life it's a decidedly domestic life living in a Serene home in the French Countryside with her adopted young daughters and her older duller and less slim husband Pierre who she's very evidently devoted to it's a mundane highly structured domestic existence that is neither hell nor Paradise to an that secures structure however is disrupted when Pierre's troubled a strange child from a past marriage Theo moves into their family home his presence is first of the petulant and aggressive constantly making a scene and being a nuisance but as he settles in his boyish charm and confidence soon takes over and Anne is immediately drawn into his web this may feel as if it's perfectly setting up the pieces for the tody stories of the younger excited man and bored older women sexual fantasies but Bria obviously doesn't fall into those cheap traps in her adaptive of the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts she actually strips away the graphic depictions of sex of the source crafting a film that is far more interested in the aura of sexual curiosity that hangs over every single scene than it is in the full physical embodiment of it bria's obsession with the sheer complexities and contradictions of Desire really comes to the Forefront with this film where she molds a forbidden attraction around grazing skin long stares gentle grasps and stolen kisses in turn it's a film more concerned with Lang bear the psyche of characters than it is laying be the bodies of the performers but Bria has never been a straightforward provocator in that way she's instead a filmmaker that equally seeks to provoke philosophical questions as she does visceral reactions from her audience but when last summer does explore this pair of sexual encounters they are thoughtfully composed and relatively subdued in terms of Brat's other more graphic Works her confrontational depiction of discomfiting intimacy is still present here but far less Brash in its observations we watch lengthy sex scenes in entirely from Theo's moaning face view Ann's passive reaction after coming down from an orgasm or hold on their open colliding mouths for what feels like an eternity she lingers on the actor's expressions in these crucial scenes rather than on their naked bodies but the film doesn't shy away from the fact that Theo is a boy with many of these carnal moments serving to highlight that the image of a baby face resting next to that of an aged older woman is unquestionably creepy nothing is ever sentimentalized even those moments intoxicated with the gradual kindling of this pair they're all real free from the grip of Romanticism and cliche brat leaves open the space to observe the ickiness of this coupling and its potential allore how this affair creates a whirlwind of Attraction intimidation and manipulation while also reflecting on both the Insidious predation at work and the melstrom of fears and impulses the vulnerable Anne finds herself surrounded by this delicate Balancing Act is of course in collaboration with the two brilliant leads of the film Leia drer and Samuel kerser drer keeps us off balance with the ambiguity of her emotions weaponizing her honest approachable face to then gradually disassemble that steady gaze then revealing a jumble of Deceit her restrained approach gives texture to this ordinary woman who is valuable and abuses her power for sexual gratification but with this complex role drer imbus an with a certain moral ambiguity rarely afforded to female actors today and she turns in career best work because of it drer is well complimented by kerser Who crafts a very real Teenage character and all of his easy to hate ways Theo is selfish and entitled with a tumultuous seawing between intensity and calm kerser captures that teen angst so authentically as well as that thorny pool toward an that he thinks he wants but isn't prepared for Bri refuses to outwardly judge both of these characters simply probing their psychology and dramatizing the elements that lead them to violate this particular boundary it would be so easy to blindly condemn without any nuanced dissection but BR is a better filmmaker than that always questioning the thing that many would brush off as Unworthy of discussion or too loathsome to care about last summer may not be Brea's Masterpiece but it's faren away her most emotionally incisive work yet less the overt provocation or immersion in numbing perversities that one might expect to find in a film about a May December relationship yet it will in spite of all that still stir up Hollow discourse even with its very delicate handling of this subject matter it's such a piercing survey of the carefully constructed facades one creates to try and mask their Insidious Desir the depths of self- delusion one plunges themselves into yet that's still incapable of saving their moral compass from completely shattering Bri sheer commitment to challenging the things that so often go unchallenged those ugliest most revolting aspects of characters that most directors wouldn't dare touch is admirable to no end her Cinema continues to exist within its own lane as revered as it is reviled she is a true iconic clast [Music]