Wow! Such a good movie.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Well, I've just started watching this and at the very least it seems like a good way to brush up on my French. Definitely worth a look-- though less than a half hour into it it some technical things struck me. For one thing, Fu'ad Ait Aattou-- he looks about 18! ...though I find that he was in fact pushing 27 when this was made. I just couldn't quite buy him as someone who'd been grown up enough to have had a mistress for ten years; he seems too much of a kid. And Roxane Mesquia, who plays the winsome young bride Hermangarde, doesn't look like a blonde; she looks like the bleached brunette she became for the role. Maybe it's just the color on my old TV... The lighting takes away from the period credibility, though this is a common enough feature of films set in what were dimly-lit times: rooms are brightly and evenly lit to accommodate the camera. The lighting and camera folks could take some pointers from the miniseries "Cranford", which stunningly evoked the look and feel of a shadowy 19th century candlelit indoor world. In "Mistress" the characters are shown in comfortably lit sets when it's supposedly dark out, and you find yourself wondering why they have candles burning when their light is plainly not needed and is in fact hardly visible.None of this, of course, addresses the quality of the film as a whole, and I'll resume commenting after having viewed the rest of it.

For years,I pretty much avoided the "face of new Euro porn" films of French director Catherine Breillart (infamous for 'Romance',or 'Romance X',as it was known in Europe). When I heard she had taken on a film adaptation of the 19th century erotic masterpiece, 'The Last Mistress', I though to myself "grand...more boring Euro porn" (I walked out on 'Romance X' out of sheer boredom,and not of shock). Well, I was pleasantly surprised by 'Mistress'. Mind you, Breillart still has some growing up as a writer/director to do (there are things that transpire that are never explained),and her characters are still for the most part, unlikable. Apart from that, she has made some improvements. The cast includes Asia Argento,who doesn't seem to have any issues with tossing off her duds and parading around nude in any film she appears in,as well as several others,including veteran British actor Michael Lonsdale. The plot concerns a penniless,good for nothing young lad who is engaged to be married to a French woman of wealth & name, but has been an off again,on again lover of a half Spanish/half French woman of no certain valor. All I could think at times was 'Dangerous Liasions' meets 'Fatal Attraction',filtered thru a European perspective. This film obviously will not be everybody's cup of tea,but is still worth a look. No rating here,but probably only pull down a hard "R",due to nudity & some fairly restrained sexuality.

Greetings again from the darkness. I always get a kick out of the French cinematic view of love. Of course, there is always some single person we are meant for ... though endless lovers are expected. Somehow there is a soul mate and we always find that person not matter the pain caused to ourself or others.Director Catherine Breillat uses the transition of France from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth as the setting for this tale of "love" among the French upper crust. A cheap plot device - the ultimate detailed confession - provides the full guts of the story, both background and foreshadow.What made the film inaccessible for me were both lead actors, especially Asia Argento as Vellini (the last mistress). I just didn't find these people likable, whether together or apart. On the other hand, I did enjoy Michael Lonsdale as de Prony, and his wonderful dialogue and delivery.Mostly an uneventful couple of hours with no surprise ending at all.

If anyone knows where it is to be found, please post information.I have an even worse question. I carefully went back for an encore after having a very good impression of this film, that lessens but, Argento is a strong performer; I never found Anne Parillaud. I looked carefully, and I still do not see her! Someone give me a hint?I did recognize the name Sarraute, immediately, but then put it out of my mind. It is amazing however, if it is true that she is not a professional actor because she was the most fully developed character and does as well as Catharine DeNeuve in,Time Regained(different era;same concerns). I caught that remark about the Laclos and the differentiation of time; and yet, when I described a hair-style to someone, it hit me that for all their concern to be fashionable, the French retained a hairstyle for some 54 years(as seen at the banquet table that evening of the "costume-disguise" party).Also, at another venue, a remark was made that Sarraute's line,as La Marquise de Flers, was "I am absolutely true to the 18th.century values" --which led me to consider by this morning, after finding it other described as "I am marvelously true to the 18th.century values", how in the world did she survive what was a class and political Revolution? She was at her prime, thus it is ironic but it explains in one line from whence the values she mentions casually in response to Marigny's story. Or, as my mother said (whose grandparents were of this return to the Bourbon Rule), "Women have the power. It is women who run things."I have yet to find a "professional reviewer" who adequately explores the ramifications of this film accurately. I have to hand it to Breillat,for her attention to "detail, detail, detail".In no way do I find fault with her Algerian segment; it's a well known psychology, to mask grief and depression with "flamboyant" sexuality.I loved the particulars of Hermangarde's wedding as choreographed by her grandmother, which reveals better than anything that remark of my mother who had an uncle who was a Roman Catholic priest. (although in some ways it is nearly as good as another film-maker's,Dutch, "deathbed symbolics"in, Antonia's Line,by Marleen Gorris). Did anyone else notice that Roxane Mesquida resembles a very young Sharon Stone? Her glare is phenomenal.Fu'ad Ait Aattou has a future revealed in the close-up delivery of his lines, and he carries himself well, he is not discomforted by the clothing of that period which he wears to advantage; but, he needs some work on those biceps. He apparently has a very deep rib-cage at the sacrifice of any shoulder or bicep development.