French ephebophilia movies haven't been as thick on the ground on the festival circuit as they used to be, but we can always count on Catherine Breillat. Her latest — about an affair between a middle-aged woman and a teenage stepson — is one of her best.

Like many of Breillat's female protagonists, the teenage boy Théo is just old enough to know that he has sexuality and feel its power, but too young to know how to wield it responsibly. There is a certain chemistry between him and his stepmother Anne, at least for a brief while, but it's not really a "love" chemistry. All but abandoned by his father for most of his life, Théo clearly gets off…

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…

I will start this review with honesty: I am not a fan of Catherine Breillat’s work. Lord knows I’ve tried. Most recently I watched Anatomy of Hell (which I never logged) and her take on Bluebeard (read my Letterboxd review of it here)— I hated the former and found the latter utterly lacking in the frisson and complication of the fairytale. In theory I appreciate a female director on her provocateur shit — utterly exploding the boundaries that Western cultures adhere to or at least pretend to respect. Every taboo, every unnerving truth is up for scrutiny. But in practice I find her work grating and her provocation a cover for threadbare thinking and noxious beliefs. I can’t help but think…