Emotions of Sexuality, Gender, Social Order Wrestle During 1800s Paris in ‘The Last Mistress’

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Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Difficult as it is now, in 1835 women in Paris never really had many choices for an eventual lifestyle.

They could hope to marry rich and live in relative comfort or they could toil in a working-class marriage while raising children and working themselves to death. If they didn’t marry, they might be a maid or a governess. If they were really bored and bold, though, they could be “The Last Mistress”.

Asia Argento in “The Last Mistress”. Photo credit: Yorgos Arvanitis/Guillaume Lavit d’Hautefort/Flash Film

Asia Argento gives a truly fearless performance as the title character. She’s a Spanish temptress named Vellini who’s first seen clinging to an older husband. Her story is told in flashback as related by her lover Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou).

His status as a nobleman is in conflict with the illicit affair, which he has recently broken off after getting engaged to a woman of his social class. He tells the story of his mistress during an all-night session with his fiancée’s grandmother.

The obsessive love affair with Vellini began after a duel with her elderly husband.

During the next 10 years, their relationship would take them to Algeria in exile. Still, it never seems to rise above the gratitude of their sexuality. Despite their obsessive physicality, it is Vellini’s lower caste status that eventually dooms their legitimate togetherness.

Asia Argento in “The Last Mistress”. Photo credit: Yorgos Arvanitis/Guillaume Lavit d’Hautefort/Flash Film

The grandmother – properly satisfied with the story and reputation of Marigny – gives her final blessing. The couple is married under the eye of proper society.

But it is Vellini who appears again in the church during the ceremony with a plan to continue the relationship with her once and future lover.

The cynicism and fire of the film all emerges from the heat of Asia Argento. She uses her body and audacity to tweak the upper-class society that can’t take their eyes off her.

It’s also interesting to note in this current tabloid news era that the film starts with a lengthy gossip session about the affair. It dishes the dirt not unlike the fixation on the celebrity culture. As the story unfolds, though, the truth is much more complex.

The sex act is used as both a revealing and vulnerable obsession between the two lovers.

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY View our full “The Last Mistress” image gallery. RELATED READING Read more film reviews from critic Patrick McDonald.

They seem to feed on their ravenous hunger for each other by inducing a form of punishment from the desire. There’s a scene in Algeria in which outdoor lovemaking becomes a symbol for abject sadness. It’s one of the most devastating images in the film.

Unlike other 19th-century parlor images in film, “The Last Mistress” gets under the fingernails of the era. It shows the less-than-perfect hygiene and bloodletting of a pre-industrial time. This adds to the unsavory nature of the proceedings and strips the eroticism of the sex scenes. It thereby exposes more than just skin.

In this clash of gender and status systems, women from all sides of the spectrum appallingly receive the short end in the affair. They become just another manipulated prize for the upper stratum of wealth and power. “The Last Mistress,” though, provides counterintuitive retribution.

By PATRICK McDONALD Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com