One of the world’s most consistently provocative filmmakers for nearly 50 years, Catherine Breillat, with her first new film in a decade, proves with her incendiary, compelling new drama that she is not through exploring the boundaries of personal choices and challenging the comfort levels of her audience.  

In Last Summer, Léa Drucker stars as Anne, a lawyer who specializes in cases of sexual consent and parental custody. Seemingly happily married to kind-hearted businessman Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin) with adopted twin daughters, Anne inexplicably finds herself drawn to Pierre’s estranged 17-year-old son Théo (Samuel Kircher) after the boy returns home to live with them. Embarking on a passionate affair with the teenager, Anne all too willingly thrusts herself into a maelstrom of attraction, intimidation, and manipulation.  

Breillat’s incisive screenplay, adapted from the Danish erotic thriller Queen of Hearts on which it is based, elegantly surveys the extreme power dynamics of risky behavior, while giving Léa Drucker, in a brave performance, the chance to create a character who exists entirely within her own moral boundaries. Last Summer proves that Ms. Breillat remains committed to defying social taboos as well as the lurking dangers of intimate and domestic life.