An Old Mistress ( Une vieille maîtresse ) ( The Last Mistress )

An Old Mistress (DVD) (*)

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Original Title: Une vieille maîtresse
Alternate Title: The Last Mistress
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Cannes Film Festival

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )

Product Origin/Format:
Australia ( PAL/Region 4 )

Running Time:
104 min + 52 min extras

Aspect Ratio:
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Anamorphic Widescreen
Cast/Crew Interview(s)
Deleted Scenes
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Trailer(s)

Movie filmed in 2007 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )
Italy ( Italy, Greece )

Directed By:
Catherine Breillat

Written By:
Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Catherine Breillat

Actors:
Asia Argento ..... Vellini
Fu'ad Ait Aattou ..... Ryno de Marigny
Roxane Mesquida ..... Hermangarde
Claude Sarraute ..... La marquise de Flers
Yolande Moreau ..... La comtesse d'Artelles
Michael Lonsdale ..... Le vicomte de Prony
Anne Parillaud ..... Mme de Solcy
Jean-Philippe Tesse ..... Le vicomte de Mareuil
Sarah Pratt ..... La comtesse de Mendoze
Amira Casar ..... Mademoiselle Divine des Airelles
Lio ..... La chanteuse
Isabelle Renauld ..... L'arrogante
Léa Seydoux ..... Oliva
Nicholas Hawtrey ..... Sir Reginald
Caroline Ducey ..... La dame de Pique

Synopsis:

The first time you see the courtesan called La Vellini, she's stretched out on a divan and wearing a smile, or perhaps a scowl. It's hard to tell with this woman, whose lips restlessly tremble and twist with rage and pleasure. She's dressed like the supine subject of Goya's painting "The Clothed Maja," which, like its sister image, "The Nude Maja," was condemned as indecent by the Spanish Inquisition. To look at the figure on screen writhing like a pampered cat is to understand why those paintings made some observers uneasy. "The Last Mistress" is unlikely to make anyone truly uneasy, because its deepest provocations - the casting of Asia Argento as La Vellini aside - occur at the level of narrative rather than through its style. Like all the unruly women who populate Catherine Breillat's films, La Vellini rubs hard against the grain. She's the fly in the ointment, the stick in the eye, and it's her howls, her spit and her fury that keep everything off kilter, disturbing the peace, its keepers and the narrative flow.

Paris, 1835... As to avoid tremors of the times, nobility teases one another by playing at 'Dangerous Liaisons' (half a century after the publication of the epistolary romance by Choderlos de Laclos). The Marquess of Flers decides to marry her young daughter, jewel of French aristocracy, to Ryno de Marigny, a sort of romantic Valmont. But no one knows that this Don Juan, unrepentant, is the ten-year lover and the victim of a scandalous courtezan, demon of fascination, daughter of a duchess and bullfighter.

A man is torn between two women--one demonic, one angelic. The young and dissolute Ryno de Marigny is betrothed to marry Hermangarde, a virtuous gem of the French aristocracy. But some, who wish the union not to occur, whisper that the young man will never break off his affair with Vellini, which has been going on for years. In a swirl of confidences, betrayals and secrets, feelings will prove their strength to be invincible.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 18 May, 2009.

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