150 Word Review: 'Last Summer' (2024)

La pire marâtre du monde

Photo: SBS Productions

Léa Drucker is astonishing and subtly repellent as Anne, a successful fifty-something lawyer, wife, and mother of adopted twin daughters who starts sleeping with her husband's 17-year-old son from another marriage. 

This movie is "problematic"—age gaps, incest, power dynamics, toxic masculinity, and graphic sex scenes. This isn't a thriller, nor is it erotic. Hollywood's immaturity is nowhere to be found, thankfully.

It starts as an unhappy family drama that suddenly veers into something resembling horror—sickening and captivating. The first time they hooked up, I shouted, "NON."

Veteran French director and provocateur Catherine Breillat is not interested in titillation or politically convenient truth in Last Summer. Her straightforward examination of moral collapse is reckless and thrilling; she does not judge Drucker's upper-class sociopath. Samuel Kircher is Theo. Breillat sexualizes Kircher's petulant, angry young man as if we're seeing him through Anne's empty eyes. Yes, he goes psycho. He's just a boy.

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