Catherine Breillat’s latest work, Last Summer (2023), offers audiences the distinctly disquieting experience of dwelling within the dark recesses of morality, power, and desire. Anne enjoys a successful career as an attorney and has a comfortable domestic life with her businessman husband Pierre and their two adopted daughters when Théo, Pierre’s estranged 17-year-old son from a previous marriage, moves into their suburban home. Hurled unexpectedly into the throes of an extremely destabilising and passionate affair with Théo, Anne contends with her own agency as she treads dangerously upon the precipice of no return.

Based on the Danish film Queen of Hearts (2019) by May al-Toukhy and bolstered by original music by Kim Gordon and Body/Head, Last Summer is a nuanced study of human behavior, the confounding complexity behind the choices they make, and the transgressions that bind people together.

Catherine Breillat (b.1948, France) is a filmmaker, writer, and professor known for her explorations of sexuality, gender, sibling rivalry, obsession, and forms of taboo. As seen in films such as Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2001), and Bluebeard (2009), Breillat’s films often upend the pre-dominantly male gaze of cinema and explicitly foregrounds the female perspective and experience. Many of her films are based on her novels, such as A Real Young Girl (1976), 36 Fillette (1988), and Abuse of Weakness (2013), the latter of which is based on Breillat’s real-life experience. Breillat has also written screenplays for major directors such as Liliana Cavani, Federico Fellini, and Maurice Pialat.