An Old Mistress (Une Vielle Maitresse)
Set in 1835 and based on a controversial novel by liberal author Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly,
An Old Mistress commences with an older man and woman discussing a liaison between a courtesan and one of her admirers, who is about to be married to a wealthy, chaste young woman.
The young woman’s grandmother has heard of this affair, and asks her granddaughter’s suitor, a dandy by the name of Ryno de Marigny, to tell her all about the unsavoury relationship. What follows, is hardly the tale of a man seeking sexual relief in the company of a willing woman of base morals, but a story of two people inexorably drawn to each other.
There is much more to this film than passion. It is a story about changing social mores, and a reminder that society has consistently vacillated on matters of morality for some time. The Grandmother grew up in the late 18th Century Paris of the post-Enlightenment, before society once more tightened its reigns on the behaviour of its inhabitants. She receives De Marigny’s story with an open mind. One can’t help but think that she is determined, regardless of what he tells her, to believe that he truly loves her granddaughter. Perhaps she sees in him a kindred spirit of sexual liberation, such as she had in her youth. Interestingly, despite the scenes of earnest sexual encounters between De Marigny and his mistress Vellini (Asia Argento), the frank emotional exchange between he and his betrothed’s grandmother is perhaps the most intimate.
A scene in which patrons at the opera regard each other with keen interest is brilliant. The contrast between peering at each other with opera glasses, and secreting one’s behaviour behind a fan is, in many respects, a metaphor for the morally libertine indulgences that occurred behind the veneer of respectable society and the pressure to adhere to prescribed behaviour.
The soundtrack is used sparingly and to great effect. At the outset of the film, we hear prim and proper string chamber music. As the story becomes more sensuous, so, too, does the soundtrack, culminating in a much more sumptuous score, though still within reasonable confines of the story’s historical setting. More often than not, Breillat opts for silence, stillness and a sense of being in the moment.
Fiery Italian actor Asia Argento (Transylvania) does what she does best in this film, by delivering an intense performance verging on the animalistic. Fu'ad Ait Aattou has a plumped, youthful Gallic pout and the soft, smooth masculinity of a marble Renaissance statue. He looks striking on screen and acts well, but his career as a model after moving to Paris from the North of France, may have limited his credibility as an actor, as he doesn’t appear to have done anything since this film.
At any rate, Breillat’s film, with its measured doses of social discourse and primal passion woven through an interesting tale, is quite absorbing.