Last Summer: Charged French Familial Drama Raises Fraught Questions, Dodges Answers

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B+

Discomfiting is one way to describe Last Summer, French filmmaker Catherine Breillat’s sun-drenched and Cannes-approved drama from 2023, a remake of the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, and the 75-year-old director’s first film in a decade.

Most ominous perhaps is the fragile perfection Breillat conjures with her setting, which viewers quickly surmise — perhaps correctly, perhaps not — will soon be shattered by a cascading series of bad decisions made by her lead, played with luminous grace (and unflappable tranquility) by Léa Drucker.

Drucker is Anne, an affluent midlife wife and mother to two lovely little adopted daughters. Anne loves dresses, heels, big glasses of wine (so French), and working as a lawyer where she specializes in defending clients in cases of abuse. Early thematic breadcrumb.

It’s all sweetness and light until teenaged Théo (Samuel Kircher) shows up. He’s the son of Anne’s husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin) from a previous marriage and he is capital-T trouble with a torso-hugging tattoo to prove it. He is, in his father’s words, “Mean as hell. I don’t know where he gets it.”

Misunderstood and/or wildly hormonal is probably more like it. In any event, Théo seems untethered to anyone or anything, and he clearly has issues with his father that neither can resolve. Moping, moping. And then, boom! With negligible seduction, Anne falls into bed with Théo while Pierre is away on a business trip. And for a sliver of a moment, things remain sweetness and light.

But still, sex with a mercurial 17-year-old stepson is bad — so spectacularly, obviously bad that everything that has come before it is suddenly thrown into question.

What just happened here with Anne? Is it the thrill of being desired by a much younger person? The headlong dive into forbidden territory? Raging storms beneath a calm surface? Maybe that Breillat’s point. Surface calm is just that: surface. Anyway, Breillat isn’t telling and Théo just wants to get laid... and maybe feel loved.

Anne clearly knows her actions are wrong; she denies the affair when confronted by Pierre. Their marriage isn’t the only thing threatened by this improper relationship. There’s Théo’s future, that of the girls, and everyone else in their circle.

The stubborn ambiguity of Last Summer — with its genuinely could-be-this, could-be-that head-scratcher of an ending — will either be a dealbreaker for viewers or proof of bold, irreverent storytelling that refuses to be neatly packaged. To be sure, the film isn’t judging so much as presenting a fraught scenario for its audience to consider.

Watching Anne’s erotic exchanges with both Théo and Pierre were strangely perplexing, though, and maybe therein lies a clue to the filmmaker’s intent. Both looked less like lovemaking than what might be indelicately call rutting, despite one lingering closeup of… maybe ecstasy? Or ennui. You decide.

Last Summer. Directed by Catherine Breillat. Starring Léa Drucker, Olivier Rabourdin, and Samuel Kircher. In theatres July 5 at TIFF Lightbox (Toronto), Bytowne Cinema (Ottawa), Cinecenta (Victoria), Dave Barber Cinematheque (Winnipeg) and Pac House (St Catharines), followed by The Cinematheque (Vancouver) and Screening Room (Kingston).