Last Summer - Movie Reviews

While Theo may feel just a boiled bunny away from Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest, such becomes his obsession, there’s also an authenticity about the central pair's chemistry that’s been missing from other older woman-younger man relationships this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2024

Propelled by a committed cast, it's more thoughtful than salacious as it confronts moral complexities within realistically fractured family dynamics.

Full Review | Sep 20, 2024

Catherine Breillat's story of forbidden love will slide under your skin.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 20, 2024

Last Summer isn’t sexually explicit in the manner of some of Breillat’s earlier features, such as the 1999 Romance. All the same, it’s a provocation, as well as a gripping story.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 12, 2024

Léa Drucker is so good here as the woman with a perfect life who'd rather jump off the cliff than accidentally fall off it, as she puts it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 6, 2024

A strong cautionary theme underscores this steamy erotic drama yet rather than get too moralistic Breillet tightens the tension between the three main characters...At a guess, the film's intimacy co-ordinator probably took stress leave after the shoot.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 5, 2024

In dissecting a woman’s affair with her teenage stepson, film-maker Catherine Breillat’s intimate gaze is as lacerating as a scalpel.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 5, 2024

although Breillat is still a revered pioneer, she is no longer the most shocking of them all. She pushed the envelope, and now every new director has run away with it.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2024

In the films of Catherine Breillat, desire makes monsters of us all.

Full Review | Aug 19, 2024

Provocateur Catherine Breillat ("Fat Girl") is back after a decade with tale of a forbidden love affair. The searing emotions onscreen are never less than credible.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 16, 2024

Catherine Breillat’s (“Fat Girl,” “The Last Mistress”) first film in ten years is a remake of the Danish submission for the 2020 International Oscar, “Queen of Hearts,” and yet is in keeping with her predilection for pushing beyond sexual norms.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 13, 2024

Until the last moments of Last Summer, Breillat takes the audience on a conflict-filled journey that mirrors that of the heroine, who vacillates between sympathetic and supremely unlikable from one moment to the next.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2024

Suggests that despite Catherine Breillat's reputation (this is a director known for using sex in cinema like a French chef lays on the butter in an omelet), she is less interested in sex as a subject than existential discontent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 9, 2024

Immoral or understandable? Catherine Breillat leaves it up to you to decide.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 7, 2024

Anne knows full well that indulging this affair endangers her personal and professional world, and yet she surrenders in what feels inevitable, especially given Breillat’s seductive pace, mesmerizing performances, and nonjudgmental approach.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2024

What makes Last Summer Breillat’s most compelling feature in over 20 years – and one of the most thoughtful and focused films in her entire oeuvre – is how the more prurient aspects of its plot are somehow the least relevant.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2024

Last Summer fires on all cylinders and is another wonderfully uncomfortable film from one of our greatest working filmmakers.

Full Review | Jul 15, 2024

That’s the character of the film as a whole: cataclysmic events taking place amid lovely, languid scenery and civil (or at least sophisticated) conversation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 12, 2024

Breillat puts a mirror to our intricate humanity, and though she makes it lovely enough to look at, the reality is what's really worth observing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 12, 2024

“Last Summer” is a work of artfully sustained sexual suspense.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 12, 2024