Cannes. Une vieille maîtresse.

"An expert at exploring the dependence between bodies and souls, controversial French director Catherine Breillat - selected for the first time in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival and doyenne of directors - presented this morning An Old Mistress, an unexpected and surprisingly tame film," writes Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa.

"Recycling her pet themes in an adaptation of the Barbey d'Aurevilly novel Une vieille maîtresse, set in 19th century Paris, the director - who at the end of 2004 survived a dangerous brain haemorrhage, which left her half paralysed for several months - has made what is almost a traditional feature, with potent love-hate relationships at the core of the plot dampened by the distance of the language of the aristocracy."

Updated through 5/26.

A "gratifyingly strong recovery from Breillat's retrograde Anatomy of Hell," announces Premiere's Glenn Kenny, who savors the plot and cast a bit: "Soon [Michael] Lonsdale's chastising the Spanish adventuress (or so it seems) Vellini, the 'old mistress' of the title, played by a feral Asia Argento. And soon after we learn that her lover Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou, sporting lips that make 60s-era-Jagger look like Mark Linn-Baker) is soon to marry the innocent heiress Hermangarde (Roxanne Masquida, whose relationship with Breillat is, I imagine, quite fascinating), and that all those in this particular social circle of the 1830's is very concerned about Ryno's libertine ways."

Rebecca Leffler talks with Breillat for the Hollywood Reporter.

Updates: "[T]his is the rare period drama that feels at once faithful to its era and thoroughly modern," writes Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab. "Breillat's ardent fans may well feel betrayed, responding only to the moment when Vellini hungrily laps the blood from her lover's gunshot wound; to my mind, this film cuts deeper than her more willfully outrageous efforts, precisely because it's populated by people who, deeply fucked up though they are, retain their sanity."

"An enormous flashback of around an hour details the ten years Ryno and La Vellini spent together and is by far the most interesting part of the film, as all that leads up to it and all that comes after is not just less interesting but actually stuffy in a respected TV-adaptation-of-a-respected-novel kind of way (associating stuffy with a Breillat film is something this critic never expected to do)," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "Because of the energy of the central section despite the period language and clothes (when they're on, that is), the other parts, in which the clothes permanently stay on and also feature elaborate speeches, feel even more stilted and could use a good trim."

"The mix of declamatory delivery and outsized emotions evident in much of Breillat's work has sometimes been too stilted - or just plain silly - to truly fly," asserts Variety's Lisa Nesselson. "But here the courtliness and formal cruelty of 19th-century French manners work in her favor.... Although the feelings and longing depicted are universal, the language is Frencher-than-French. Subtitles of the highest order will be needed to do justice to the dialogue's subtleties."

"Like many movies once upon a time, and few today, An Old Mistress approaches romantic passion with a voluptuous seriousness," write Richard and Mary Corliss for Time. "The Cannes audience giggled at some of the more intense scenes — as when Ryno has a bullet removed from his chest and Vellini avidly licks the wound.... The film may be more seductive than it is plausible, and it's not Breillat's most engaging work (that would be Fat Girl and its funnier remake, Sex Is Comedy). But this filmmaker's train of erotic thought is always worth taking a ride on."

Update, 5/26: "Leave it to Ms Breillat, whose films include Romance, a raw, philosophical inquiry about the bedroom, and her last film, the gravely miscalculated Anatomy of Hell, to push Ms Argento further yet, and with exhilarating results," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "From the first moment she appears on screen, stretched across a divan in a supine pose and dressed in a costume that directly invokes Goya's painting The Clothed Maja (which, along with its match, The Nude Maja, was seized during the Spanish Inquisition for being 'obscene'), Ms Argento has us in her grasp. She never lets go."

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 25, 2007 9:39 AM