An Old Mistress

I am not a fan of Catherine Breillat’s work though the ending of Romance, with a filmed childbirth, has a sly sense of wit about it. For the most part, her idiosyncratic, feminist and sexually explicit oeuvre has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. An Old Mistress, not as controversial and more accessible than her previous films, received much praise and may I add my own hosannas for this film. It is adapted from a French novel (written by Barbey d'Aurevilly according to wiki) and from the movie it largely appears that the story is set in a post Choderlos de Laclos era (de Laclos wrote Dangerous Liaisons, of which the best filmed version must be the Korean one). Here Breillat has the basic story to work off and does it justice. Briefly, an impoverished roué and dandy, Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou), decides to marry a wealthy aristocrat Hermangarde (Breillat regular Roxane Mesquida) but before he does so he must break off with his older mistress of ten years, La Vellini (Asia Argento). He has broken off the affair in the past but always returned. The marriage has the approval of the girl’s grandmother in spite of advice to the contrary. She appears to have known more hell raising times than the life of the 1830s crowd and besides seems to like the boy. The core of the story is the re-telling of the ten year affair by de Marigny to the grandmother so she “knows the man her grand daughter intends to marry”. Central to this is how de Marigny woos La Vellini and the loss of their child post which their love becomes a “barbarous love”, an addiction neither can successfully quit. The marriage does take place but La Vellini is not so easy to quit. No points for guessing the ending, this is after all a French novel and a French film. Suffice it to say that though de Marigny tries to escape a mistress who becomes “so totally organized for pleasure she always needed it”, he remains both a prioner and slave to his passion for La Vellini.

Like most of Breillat’s works, there is a certain kind of “flat” look to the scenes. There is no background music and before you get into the pace of the film, there is a stilted theatricality to the scenes (which eventually works in its favour). In setting up what is in some ways a triangle between de Marigny’s mistress, proposed bride and her grandmother, Briellat is able to explore many facets. For awhile de Marigny is deeply in love with his innocent, young wife and enough so to believe he can walk away from his mistress forever. Vellini is not a whore but she is simply too outré for polite society. The actress who plays her has a tendency to schlock, there are a few scenes where she draws and licks blood, this she does with such relish that you expect the movie to suddenly take a diversion into vampire territory. Nevertheless through her feral performance, her exotic persona you can see why de Marigny would be compelled to return. Though Breillat gets a lot out of her cast, it’s the grandmother (Claude Sarraute in a tender, intelligent performance) who is the standout. The film is also not as sexually explicit as the regular Breillat film; it's more your standard European art house fare. The only explicit scenes draw blood - the removal of a bullet and a chicken being drained of blood.
I don’t normally watch DVD extras but I did with this film because I was a little curious about Breillat’s methods. Breillat appears to have been ostracized by her country to some extent (though this film seems to have rehabilitated her with a Cannes nod) hence her identification with an author she says was strictly Catholic and yet battled the hypocrisy of society at large, the novel itself was scandalous in its time. Breillat also talked about the costumes – the look of the film is sumptuous due to its period setting – her selection of fabrics current in the 1830s, her attention to how these would look in close ups, her attempts to meld paintings and to borrow some of Dietrich’s outré look a century later for La Vellini. It all makes for a movie that is definitely a period film but has Breillat's stamp all over it and is a small triumph. Plus Breillat seems to have had a lot of fun making it.