The Last Mistress

Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress is a film marked by profound tension, and not just the tension stirring within and between its divided characters, but the tension it creates within the genre of the period romance from which it draws both its story and its style. Based on a mid-1800s novel by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, the film relates a classic, even archetypal, tale of misplaced