This review originally ran as part of the Hassle’s coverage of IFFBoston 2024

In what feels like a parody of French dramatic filmmaking, Catherine Breillat unleashes a comedy about a woman who cannot stop getting what she wants, including her wayward stepson. Last Summer could be the comedy of this summer, if the audience is willing to laugh along at this torrid affair unfolding around the world’s most oblivious French family. 

Anne (Léa Drucker) is a lawyer living in Paris with her older husband, Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), and their adopted daughters, Serena and Angela. When Pierre’s 17-year-old son Théo (Samuel Kircher), from his first marriage, is kicked out of school, he comes to spend the summer with his father’s new family. Théo tests Anne’s authority, and things quickly get physical. Anne struggles to hide the affair and contain her lustful passion for the boy, but things start to turn as the summer drags on.

Breillat upends the long history of age gap cinema by casting a skinny loser as the object of Anne’s affection, a performance so perfectly off-putting that Anne’s attraction comes off as totally ridiculous. This is not some hunk masquerading as a teenager meant to thrill the audience, this is a stupid little boy with bad tattoos. This relationship is horrifying. It’s so funny. Every encounter leaves Anne breathless, as if Théo is a sex god sent from above. He is not. He is a disturbed child that no one knows how to deal with. And Anne is certainly not helping matters… 

Probably as funny and melodramatic as a film about child abuse can be, Last Summer made me curious to explore the rest of Breillat’s filmography, which I can only imagine is just as chill and normal as this.

Last Summer
2023
dir. Catherine Breillat
104 min.

Runs Friday, 8/16 through Sunday, 8/18 @ Brattle Theatre – click here for showtimes and ticket info
Previously screened as part of IFFBoston 2024