THECinema is the art of making graceful things do to graceful women. The quote, by François Truffaut, is contradicted, minute after minute, from Another summer by Catherine Breillat. The story of the forbidden, immoral and scandalous relationship between a woman and her stepson is everything except “cute”. Yet the film of this countercurrent director – aired tonight on the first TV on heaven at 9.15 pm – it is so complex, elegantfree of rhetoric or easy provocations to leave us completely subjugated.
Another summer, The plot of the film at 9.15 pm on Cielo
Anne, played by Léa Drucker, It is an esteemed lawyer specialized in the protection of minors. A work of great social importance but emotionally very demanding. Anne is always in contact with children and teenagers who have undergone abuse, mistreatment and often have avoiding and ambiguous conduct. To prepare them to face the process, he submits them to long and exhausting interrogations regarding their intimate and sexual life.
Anne’s private life is also very demanding. He is the adoptive mother of two Asian girls And it’s Pierre’s second wife (Olivier Rabourdin), director of human resources of a large company. They live in a beautiful house in the French countryside, in a typical and lindo portrait of the high-bourgeois family. Their life seems without big shades when nShe quiete the problematic Théo bursts (Samuel Kircher), Son of Pierre.
Seventeen year old but very characterended up in trouble – also legal – for having attacked one of his teachers. The father feels guilty for having neglected him to focus on his career and for having redone a family, and welcomes him at home. Anne and Théo start dating in everyday life. They know each other and somehow recognize. Creano a bond that flows into a relationship.
The two protagonists of “Another summer” (Theodora Film)
Another summerthe review of Catherine Breillat’s erotic thriller
With Another summer Catherine Breillat returns to the cinema 10 years after her latest film, Abuse De FABILESSE (2013). The film, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2023, It’s a Danish remake Dronningen of director May El-Toukhy. While remaining adherent to the poetics of Breillat on sexuality and female desire (To my sister!, Romance) And Ribaling the traditional roles of man and women in a brilliant way, this erotic thriller puts nakedin every sense, too Very other themes.
In particular, The discussion focuses on bourgeois societyon that world of self -imposed rules to maintain respectability and quiet living. Deepens the loss of identity of adults, By now unable to be responsible for young people. They mix with them with the vain and omnipotent hope of living on an equal footing. Above all, The film records ambivalence and ambiguity behind each choice, Where white and black, the truth and lies more and more lose their reassuring contours.
The prohibited relationship between Anne and Théo is the detonator that I unload not only the feelings but above all the hypocrisies of the family. Their bond has no future but risks sending everything that is exactly what exactly what it is.
The director does not linger in trivial shots of naked bodies but everything is underlying. Visual ellipses are not an expedient to surprise but the key to leaving freedom to the viewer: to judge or ask questions. About the sex scenes, the director explains his unusual choice: «The bodies do not interest me, I am more interested in faces. There is much more intimacy in faces than in the body, Even when they live their embarrassment ».
The open ending of the film
From the first sequences, The character and soul of Anne, magnificently played by Léa Drucker (Le Bureau – undercover) They prove to be in the scenes in which it is shown to work. During a hard preparatory interrogation, an adolescent who could be his daughter with intimate, explicit, without respect questions.
Likewise, his passion for Théo, also At times genuine, feeds on eros but above all of the prospect of escaping from a society without stimuli. Certainly it is not a “cougar”, the predator who loves to seduce the kids to feel still attractive. Indeed: Anne is a glacial woman, who loves control until you get hurt. The game loses its unstable balance When the boy tells their father their secret. From here the styles of A very refined thriller worthy of Alfred Hitchcock (if he were born in France).
Anne is thus accused incest, to have plagiarism his stepson. With his admirable manipulative art he tries in to overturn the situation in his favor. He tells the truth by lying and, lying, tells his truth. This dualism, between true and lies, hides in each of the characterswho end up believing even what they don’t believe they do not lose the status quo. Théo is postponed to the college As Adam was hunted by Eden. In return, Anne solves his legal problems: a sort of farewell and compensation To then return to the husband. But how long will it last?
I woman © RESERVED REPRODUCTION