Nothing in this sick, sad world is simpler or more complicated than sex, a principle that helps to explain why the ever-provocative Catherine Breillat — whose films so often consecrate female desire by rendering it violently indefinable — was drawn to remake a 2019 Danish movie about a middle-aged lawyer who dedicates her life to defending young rape victims, only to begin a torrid affair with her own 17-year-old stepson. May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts” spun that stark hypocrisy into a melodrama ridden with shame and secret darkness. Breillat’s “ Last Summer ” is much lighter in every way, and all the more revealing as a result; it leverages the same premise into a rich exploration of the inadequate judgment such a premise exists to invite.
Seductively empathetic without absolving its heroine or trolling the audience into aligning themselves with her, this adaptation bypasses any sort of moral binary in order to make the case that what happens between two people — or even between a woman and her own body — is far more complex than social ideology can ever hope to understand. Breillat sees art as the best hope we have for bridging that gap, and so “ Last Summer ” is less compelled by crime and punishment than it is by the soft mysteries that people struggle to solve within themselves. Rationales abound, but answers remain as elusive as the logic of a dream.
Anne ( Léa Drucker ) lives her life with eyes wide open, and she bluntly insists that her cli.
