We gave it an intriguing name: in the original it was designated “The Last Summer”, again, the very innocence of a school essay. The film was shot after a ten-year hiatus; The previous film, “The Abuse of Weakness,” was dedicated to psychopathological passions, somehow related to Breuya’s personal life; It is considered autobiographical. “Forbidden Passion” is unique in its own way: no one has dared to reshoot the plot of a film that has just made a splash, and this is an almost word-for-word repetition of the drama “Queen of Hearts.” “, which was nominated by Denmark for the Oscar award.
Such an immediate reaction, by cinema standards, to the appearance of a provocative plot is understandable: Breillat felt something close to him in the film of his Danish colleague Mai el-Touki, and wanted to experience something similar on his set, where taboos were abolished. “Everyone hates artists,” said Catherine Breillat in an interview with The Telegraph, probably referring to these features of his cinema, which teeters on the edge of voyeurism, paradoxically combined with the composure of a natural scientist, and which often provokes irritated responses from critics. .
What is easy to read in “Lolita” requires a special touch when translating it to the screen; Otherwise, we are in the role of voyeurs.
Successful lawyer Anna defends clients who have suffered sexual violence. She seems content with her life in a country mansion with a loving husband and adopted daughters. The troublemaker will be her stepson, the son of her husband from her first marriage, 17-year-old Theo. He is a “difficult teenager”, the police caught him more than once and, to put him on the right path, his father decided to take the boy from his ex-wife and install him in his house. It would be better to be a loving older brother to the little ones.
And Theo willingly plays this role. For a difficult teenager, he even seems too pedagogically precise and discreet in dealing with the little ones. Although there are scenes stuck close where he is uncontrollably arrogant, rude and explosive in every way. There’s even an episode where a smart young man steals his new house, which won’t get a psychological explanation: why the hell did he need it?
But soon Theo develops a special relationship with his stepmother, to whom she responds easily, succumbing to the charm of youth. He feels the ambiguity of the situation, but cannot resist, and Breuya’s characteristic risk episodes will begin: independent “concert numbers” that are not easy to watch. Of course, this doesn’t happen in life, but it happens when it is no longer possible to separate the characters in a drama from their performers. Samuel Kircher, who plays Theo, is the same age as his hero; At the time of filming he was seventeen years old. Leah Drucker, who plays forty-year-old Anna, is much older than her character, which cannot be hidden with makeup. The contrast in the foreground (cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie films with enthusiasm and sensuality) inevitably evokes contradictory and uncomfortable emotions. For some, moralizing abilities will be awakened, for others these scenes will become an aesthetic shock, but what is easily read in some “Lolita” requires tact in its implementation on the screen. Otherwise, we are voyeurs, a condition that has a record level of filth.
I don’t know what, apart from the erotic touch, could have attracted Breuil to the script for “Queen of Hearts” (actually, it would be more correct to translate “Queen of Hearts”). In making it his movie, he left a lot of the dialogue intact, but increased the tension. The final “fuck” seems especially ridiculous when, thanks to the sophistication of the lawyer, almost extricating himself from the scandal, the heroine again succumbs to a fit of lust and then returns to bed with her husband. Such an ending rejects even a vague hint of the moral torment Anna seemed to be experiencing. The image is deprived of any meaning other than the affirmation of the power of the flesh, capable of killing even the appearance of reason. She treats her predecessor like a tabloid treats a psychological novel.
The acting in the film is good. Leah Drucker skillfully addresses the topic of a lawyer’s manipulative skills. Olivier Rabourdin, in the role of Pierre, develops the motif of confusion that takes over a man who allows himself to be deceived by those closest to him. The debutant Samuel Kircher is a professional for his age, sometimes managing to overcome the vagueness of the role’s script: the authors have not determined whether the boy is playing with his elderly stepmother, playing for some reason a “call boy”, or whether They are paroxysms of true passion. Either you feel a calm indifference in him, then he becomes a seasoned cynic, then a tangle of bleeding nerves, then an insidiously abandoned Romeo.
The film’s target audience is hungry women of Balzac’s age. Others will be drawn to the story out of tabloid curiosity.
