2024-01-12 17:41:48
Culture “Last Summer”
The woman who breaks four taboos at once
Status: 12.01.2024 | Reading time: 3 minutes
Lovers: Samuel Kircher and Léa Drucker
Source: © Alamode Filmverleih
You can listen to our WELT podcasts here
In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
She seems happy with her older man. Until his 17-year-old son moves in with them. A hide-and-seek film of lies and sex begins. With “Last Summer” the Frenchwoman Catherine Breillat makes a remarkable contribution to the current discussion about age differences in relationships.
While half the world is still debating Sophia Coppola’s Elvis film adaptation “Priscilla” – is the love affair between the 14-year-old student and the 24-year-old global star being trivialized, aestheticized, and glorified too much? – and at least Germany is still waiting for the release of “May December” about the affair between a teacher and her 13-year-old student, a reversed, but hardly less dicey Lolita story is now coming to the cinema.
also read
It is a fictional story based on the Scandinavian romantic drama “Queen” (2019), which the Frenchwoman Catherine Breillat brings to the screen with “Last Summer” (original: “L’été dernier”). In the film, which was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival (and came away empty-handed), the protagonist Anne (Léa Drucker) breaks four taboos at once: The most harmless is that Anne is married and cheats on her husband, with whom she adopted two sweet little girls.
What’s worse is that the affair the woman in her late forties is having involves a 17-year-old boy, Théo (Samuel Kircher). He is also her stepson, the son of her husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin). One day, after an argument with his mother, he moves in with them and turns their lives upside down. And as if that weren’t enough of the monstrous, Anne works during the day as a successful lawyer who represents victims of abuse in court – against the lies and self-lying of the perpetrators, who now threaten her.
Suddenly everything feels so easy: Samuel Kircher and Léa Drucker
Source: © Alamode Filmverleih
Beneath the surface of the light, late summer idyll reminiscent of France in the 70s, it rots and crackles at the same time. It is almost a chamber play; a large part of the scenes take place in the stately garden in the shade of the rustling trees, or in the elegantly furnished country house, for example in bed, where Anne whispers to her husband one day how beautiful she is in his old age (she was probably a “gerontophile”), and just a few days later she was rummaging through the sheets with his underage son.
Anne (Léa Drucker) is torn between her husband and his son
Source: © Alamode Filmverleih
Jeanne Lapoirie’s camera captures Kircher in the way we were used to seeing girls and young women, i.e. with flowing, curly hair that shines in the sun, or with cherry-red, half-open lips, his gaze directed lasciviously forward. According to the film scholar Laura Mulvey, who coined the term “male gaze” in 1975, one could say that looking at Théo suggests “wanting to be looked at”. Kircher plays the young seducer just as brilliantly as Drucker plays the woman to whom the expression “from saint to whore” or “from mother to monster” really applies here for once. She and Breillat abandon the solid foundation of morality so often that one no longer knows where to find it.
What is it that attracts Anne to Théo? The lure of the forbidden, the risk of losing everything – her privileged life including her husband, daughters, garden, house, job, friends and reputation? Or is it Théo’s almost girlish grace that doesn’t let her look away? One of the greatest strengths of this cool-warm family tragedy is that it not only doesn’t answer this question, it doesn’t even raise it.
Here you will find content from third parties
In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
#Summer #woman #breaks #taboos