with “Last Summer”, Catherine Breillat in the line of controversial romances

A thunderbolt that is more like a stormy affair. In Last summera lawyer, camped by Léa Drucker, falls in love with her still adolescent stepson, even if it means breaking up her family. “This woman is responsible, she is aware, but she succumbs to something, she is overwhelmed“, describes the actress. A subversive and provocative director, Catherine Breillat has always been interested in the world of desire and sexuality. “Moi if I am forbidden something, I do it, if only to materialize the prohibition”she says.

Guilty desires

From lolita by Stanley Kubrick, sinful desires and forbidden passions are recurring themes. As in The winner, the young Dustin Hoffman falls under the influence of a friend of his parents. In France, Annie Girardot is overwhelming in the role of a teacher in love with her student, inspired by the Gabrielle Russier affair. Half a century later, the subject also returns in a film presented this year with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, which stages a romance between a mature woman and a man 30 years her junior. Cinema always likes to flirt with taboos.