Nice effects though.

From my favorite movies..

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Une vieille maîtresse – The Last Mistress – CATCH IT (B) Based upon controversial French novel "Une vieille maîtresse/An old Mistress" by Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly. Just like most of the French movies The Last Mistress doesn't hesitate from sex, seduction and brutality of love. It's a story about a young rich French Ryno de Marigny who is ready to get married into a Nobel family. Just before getting married he confronts in front of his future rich wife's grandmother about his last old mistress of 10 years. The movie unfolds how Ryno falls head over heels for an older married woman, who is not even pretty or graceful. It's the rawness which attracts Ryno towards her, whom he first called an ugly nut. Fu'ad Aït Aattou a newcomer played Ryno with utmost honesty. He is divine and his falling for an Asia Argento's ambiguous character is questionable. But that's the whole point of love, lust and seduction when two unlikely people meet and ruin everything around them along with each other. Asia Argento is amazing, even though I saw her first in Marie Antoinette as French king's crazy mistress raised question of her action ability because she acted the same as she acted here. If I ignore that she was in tedious Marie Antoinette and Une vieille maîtresse release long before atrocious Marie Antoneitte. I actually loved her performance. There are many few actresses who can let them emotionally and physically open like that. You forget that it's the part of an act as it looks reality. Fu'ad Aït Aattou and Asia Argento's chemistry makes this a memorable venture. The long sex confrontation scenes are the proof how involved they are with the subject. Roxane Mesquida as Ryno's wife is stunning as always. Une vieille maîtresse is a controversial tale of lust, love and seduction. Overall, I enjoyed the movie even though I wanted the characters to be smart not so naïve and stupid, lost in sex, lust and seduction.

Its been awhile since I fell in love with a film, THE LAST MISTRESS reignited the flame. It is by far the best film yet of 2008. Few films can really develop the inexplicable magnetism of one person to another, the unbreakable bond that keeps them from drifting afar for too long. Its rare to experience, and difficult to understand. Somehow Breillat has brought to life a rich portrait of the love of a lifetime. Criticisms of pacing are way off, the performers are thinking, soaking in their melancholy and you track that sadness out of the theater in wet footprints. It was hard to leave the room when the credits were over, I wanted more of them, to believe in love no matter how much pain or consequence weathers its journey. Steadfast and true. One of the best female characters to date, and by far a groundbreaking performance from Argento! Rich, passionate, heartbreaking and Breillat's greatest success yet. This is film-making my friends! The younger ones may have trouble understanding or appreciating. For those of us still in love.

The Last Mistress, a film by Catherine Breillat, director of the hot-n-sexy (and probably X-rated if released in the 1970s) Romance, deals with the torn and frayed and wretched relationship between Vellini (Asia Argento), and Ryno de Marigny (first timer Fu'ad Ait Aattou), and how Ryno's mistress threatens his marriage to Hermandarde (Roxane Mesquida), granddaughter of a tough but very fair and reasonable old matriarch. Breillat's direction of the story, which is mostly told in flashback as the grandmother of her soon-to-be-grandson-in-law tells all about his very turbulent bond with Vellini, is sometimes a little dull and stodgy, and it drags in spots that it really should pick up in high gear.But damn it all if it's not some absorbing times in the midst of a classic period setting among character we can relish in. Granted, Breillat likely cast Aattou for constantly having a 'sexy-man' look (somewhat akin, if you ask me, of a young Mick Jagger with ridiculously striking eyes and big lips). Argento, on the other hand, is cast perfectly, and for every bit that Aatou and Mesquida don't quite connect as husband and wife it's made up for by the total, hot connection between the real two leads. Argento is right at home with this twisted, damaged but alive and easily emotional creature, who has that tendency in French melodramas for tragedy at any moment just to get a rise. But she's also tender in surprising moments, and lets her soul bare completely in rough sex scenes (the craziest set in the desert following a very sudden death of a character), which par for Breillat are go-for-broke.What the film may lack in really being a fully "modern" work- it feels like a lot of it is so stuck in the period novel setting that it's locked away, which maybe was the right choice- it's made up for by the stars' appeal and the drive of the torrid love affair that just won't go away. It's appealing, boring, and highly charged in equal measure.

Catherine Breillat's latest film showed up on IFC in theaters and I figured I'd try it since I saw a couple of good but not great reviews.Set in 1835 the plot has a young man, who has been having a long term affair with an older woman, having his life and wedding plans upset by his mistress who just won't get over him. Whats worse is he can't get over her and thanks to two gossips (who take a holier than thou road, while privately taking great glee in destroying lives) everyone is talking about it.More accessible Breillet film was for me nothing special. The problem for me was that once you realized that neither of the lovers was going to give up the affair there really was nowhere to go. Basically you have two people who love and hate each other and really can't leave the other even though its the only sensible thing to do. Realistic to be certain but the film kind of has no where to go and by the end of its running time your ready to move on to something else.Sixish out of ten.