With The Last Mistress, always-controversial French director Catherine Breillat has hearkened back to the golden age of her country's aristocratic era. With the period setting, the deliberate pacing and the trappings of a time often thought of as fodder for Oscar-bating movies about doomed love, one might just suspect the director of Romance, Fat Girl and Anatomy of Hell of going soft. But then you spot Asia Argento in the credits, and remember that this is a woman who wrote her first major novel at the age of 17 only to have it rejected by the French classification system on the grounds that the material was unsuitable for readers under the age of 18, and you realize you've got nothing to worry about. Although she's just passed her 60th birthday and suffered a major stroke that kept her out of action for several months, the woman who says that "Censors are a kind of mafia" isn't going soft for anyone.
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