Une vieille mistress (2007)

Directed by: Catherine Breillat | 104 minutes | drama | Actors: Asia Argento, Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud, Jean-Philippe Tesse, Sarah Pratt, Amira Casar, Lio, Isabelle Renauld, Léa Seydoux, Nicholas Hawtrey, Caroline Ducey , Jean-Claude Binoche, Thomas Hardy, Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand, Eric Bouhier, Frédéric Botton, Patrick Tétu, Aurélien Foubert, Marie-Victoire Debré, Camille Schnebelen, Ashley Wanninger, Jean-François Lepetit

Lavishly dressed and shot costume film, based on the 1851 book by Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly. That book was quite controversial at the time because of its daring content. A great job for the equally controversial filmmaker Catherine Breillat. With this film she shows that she has recovered sufficiently from a severe brain haemorrhage in 2004 to make an adaptation of the novel and make it into a film.

The film opens and ends with a dialogue between the Countess d’Artelles (Moreau) and the Viscount de Prony (veteran Lonsdale) as they gossip about the people around them and philosophize about human habits and weaknesses. At the center of both discussions is the libertine Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou) who hangs out in the salons and often seduces married ladies, but actually has no money. They worry that the Marquise (Claude Sarraute) is making an unwise choice to let her granddaughter Hermangade (Roxane Mesquita) marry this scoundrel. This is mainly because of his “old mistress” (see the title) Vellini (Asia Argento), who they fear cannot let go of her.

Thus ‘Une valle maîtresse’ is a morality sketch of a nobility, who has little more than titles to brag about. A noble character is in any case not a requirement. It is not for nothing that reference is made to Choderlos de Laclos, one of Napoleon’s generals, but better known as the author of ‘Les liaisons dangereuses’.

Asia Argento (daughter of horror director Dario Argento) is well cast as the fiery Vellini, a courtesan descended from an Italian princess and a famous Spanish bullfighter. Fu’ad Ait Aattou complements her well, despite his inexperience, as the Marigny. He does look a bit sickly, with his pale face, sunken green eyes and full lips, but that fits with the debauched lifestyle his character has. With his low-key play with minimal gestures, Ait Aattou is difficult to estimate, which befits the somewhat mysterious de Marigny. Claude Sarraute also shows her best side. At first she runs away with her granddaughter’s betrothed, but the Countess d’Artelles makes her doubt and subjects Marigny to a kind of interrogation. A large part of the film is then made up of long flashbacks in which the story of de Marigny and Vellini is reviewed. From their first meeting, in which he labels her as “ugly” within earshot, to a costume party and a duel with her husband Sir Reginald, an English baron, to a tragic event in Algeria. Meanwhile, the lovesick Hermangade hopes that the relationship between her fiancé and his old mistress is actually over.

Director Breillat was nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and turned the scandalous novel into a good film with subtle dialogues and a few direct sex scenes, although it never gets as explicit as in some of her earlier films. Not as scandalous or with the complicated intrigue as the aforementioned ‘Les liaisons dangereuses’, but an excellently acted and attractive spectacle.