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Catherine Breillat has largely been viewed by film critics as a controversial French Director, after a series of lascivious experiments with mostly audience-bludgeoning, totally anti-romance films like Romance and Fat Girl. But in The Last Mistress, she unexpectedly stepped out of this tradition and produced a lurid exploration into the passionate and lustful side of male-female relationships. Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress has helped the female director to preserve her singular feminist roots, merge her psychosexual explorations in the imbalances of men and women, and still assemble her most reputable art house film. Directed and written by Catherine Breillat, the Jean-François Lepetit film, intones ideologies of sex, of lust, of domination, and of the French Aristocracy.
The engrossing film is based on Jules-Amedee Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novel ‘Un Vieille Maitresse’ written in the 19th-century. The storyline of the film is basically about a tale of love, lust and deceit. A 30 year-old French libertine attempts to cheat on his betrothed, every inch a chaste aristocrat, so that he can marry the beautiful daughter of a famed Italian cum Spanish nobility. This helps introduce the Andalusian courtesan, a ferocious lustful character, and a venomous Madame, in the name of Vellini (Asia Argento). Vellini is a flamboyant young blood, with hair to match her fiery spirit and an attitude that scorches the very earth she walks on.
 Last Mistress from Ideology The young playboy by the name Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou) dismisses the married woman at first calling her an ‘ugly mutt’ only to change after a moments stare. He resolves to domesticate the daughter and wife of nobility despite her hatred against him. Through flashbacks, we learn how Ryno’s initial loathing for the perfect mistress to be, Vellini, turned into arousal, then pursuance and finally conquest. Indeed, eventually, he manages to pull her into exile in Argentina where they sire a daughter. The daughter however dies soon after, following a scorpion sting. The loss throws the couple, especially Vellini, into a grief abyss, with desperate bellowing growls. After the loss, the couple realizes they are not in love, and
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A relationship that has a husband, wife and mistress combination is rarely good for any one of them. The wife considers it a betrayal by the husband, the husband feels guilty for being on the wrong and therefore guilty before the wife and the children. The mistress on the other hand feels cheap and used. She knows that she is wrong to welcome a straying married man to her lap, no matter the justification. But we all know about human failings. We know about matters of the flesh, especially where there is lust. And so the incidences of men keeping mistresses are going to be with us for as long as there are men and women on the planet.
When it becomes a fact that the man is keeping a mistress, and both the man and the mistress are okay with, for rarely will the wife concede, one of life’s greatest ironies emerges. Clearly it is the man who is on the wrong at most times. But instead of the wife hating him for it, she transfers that hatred and blame on the mistress, for leading her man astray. On her part, the mistress hates the wife for staying put with a cheating man. It would be better, the mistress thinks, for the wife to divorce the man who does not love her. If that were to happen, the mistress would not hesitate to fill her gap.
 Mistress versus Wife The relationship between a wife and a mistress is therefore based on these selfish considerations where each woman is basically guided by animalistic instincts of survival, concerned only with her own welfare and those of the kids if there are some. The women are competing for one man, or at least for his undivided attention and devotion. In most cases, the wife has the support of the society, the family and her own children, which actually isolates the man even more. Consequently, he seeks attention, solace and comfort from the mistress who is only too willing to go to any length to make the man happy. While playing these opposing roles, the mistress and the wife are
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By the time a woman makes a resolute decision to be a mistress, there is a psychological quagmire and warfare she has had to go through. It is usually a very tough decision, one based on a foray of considerations and choices. There are some key factors that determine how the whole episode plays out until one finds herself a mistress. These factors constitute the psychological reasons for being a mistress, from the mistress’ perspective.
To begin with, there are four conditions that lead a woman to accept to play the role of a mistress to a married man. First, love. A woman will accept to a proposal of being a mistress, to a man she loves wholeheartedly. There are times that a woman will fall madly in love with a married man, which no other man single or otherwise will equal no matter what. This man might be in circumstances that may not allow him to get a divorce or even he may be unwilling to get one, but the woman will accept to be a mistress if only to have a piece of the man.
 Being a Mistress The second reason for which a woman will readily become a mistress is, if by being a mistress to the man, she will secure her chances of getting married. A married man, who promises to get a divorce soonest possible, will use his wrecked relationship with the wife as an explanation for the philandering. Then he will of course require the relationship to continue as he works on the divorce. The other woman will hung on, albeit as a mistress, waiting for the slot soon to be vacated buy the wife. In her thinking, she is only a mistress for a brief moment. This is the most common of
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