LAST SUMMER (B-minus) - Ah, those lazy days. Catherine Breillat, one of the touchstones of modern French cinema, phones in a familiar story of forbidden love -- here it is a professional woman who sleeps with her teenage stepson. It's an idea that's been trite for decades and almost a parody of porn searches.
Lea Drucker ("The Blue Room," "Two of Us") stars as Anne, a lawyer who is shown at the beginning of the film successfully litigating a rape case on behalf of the victim and then finalizing arrangements for a teenage girl to gain custody under her father, who looks a bit sketchy. She is impeccably dressed, with soccer-mom hair; she would be considered "According to Jim" hot. She doesn't think much of her dumpy husband, Pierre (Olivier Raboudin), a beefy guy who is constantly whining about his own corporate job.
Enter Theo (Samuel Kircher), a troubled teen whom Pierre has ignored most of the kid's life. Theo joins the household that also includes the couple's pair of adopted little girls. It takes about half of the 104-minute film for Anne and Theo to start to hook up. I know the heart wants what it wants, and bizarre couplings happen all the time, but there is something improbable about Anne, a composed, successful woman, falling for a cipher of a teenage dropout. Breillat's camera likes to linger on Theo as he smirks and broods. Kircher comes from the Timothy Chalamet school of scrawny disaffection. (During one lovemaking session, Anne marvels to Theo, "You're so thin.")
Breillat seems fascinated by the faces of these three people during various bouts of sex -- first the husband as he conducts an obligatory servicing of his wife; then Theo, who doesn't seem to be much more skilled at the art; and then Anne, late in the film, as she achieves what apparently is the quietest, most subtle orgasm imaginable. The connection between Anne and Theo just never seems real.
That's not the only disconnect between the narrative and modern life. Anne is rarely seen working, even though she likely has a job that is much more demanding than her husband's. When Anne's sister catches her and Theo making out, there are few meaningful repercussions from that revelation. In one scene, Breillat lingers on a car trip coming home from the beach with Theo and the girls, and we get an extended spin of a Sonic Youth song from 35 years ago, a sharp reminder that Breillat is stuck in the past. This feels like a cable TV movie from that pre-millennium era, and despite a provocative tactical move by Anne at the movie's climax, none of this feels weighty enough to matter.
BONUS TRACK
Sonic Youth, "Dirty Boots"
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