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'Mistress' of all she surveyed

By Mina Hochberg | amNewYork movie critic

2:15 PM EDT, June 26, 2008

Asia Argento as La Vellini and Fu'ad AÃ¯t Aattou as Ryno de Marigny in 'The Last Mistress.' (Yorgos Arvanitis/Guillaume Lavit d'Hautefort/Flash Film)

Directed by Catherine Breillat and starring the carnal incarnate Asia Argento, "The Last Mistress" is an absorbing, entertaining period drama that sets a passionate love affair against the backdrop of aristocratic Parisian society in the 1830s. This wealthy world is populated with pasty, corpulent, mannered types who revel in swift judgment, and the subject of their swift judgments is the imminent marriage between the wealthy, chaste young Hermangarde de Polmaron (Roxane Mesquida) and Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou), a young dandy with little pedigree and a scandalous relationship history to boot.

With the wedding just days away, Hermangarde's grandmother pulls Ryno aside for a fireside chat about his dubious history. She urges him to be frank, taking great pains to let him know that unlike many of her snobby friends, she shares some of his libertine morals, carried over from the more freewheeling mores of the 17th century she grew up in.

And so begins Ryno's explicit, narrated tale of how he fell in love with the Spanish mistress Vellini (Argento), with her scalding glare and unconcealed sexuality. Their love affair spanned a decade, persisting, for better or for worse, through periods of tragedy and mutual hatred.

As Ryno rounds out his tale, he swears to his grandmother-to-be that his affair is over. But both he and the granddame are no fools. They forge ahead, optimistic about a happy marriage, but Breillat, through her deft script, sculpts an implicit understanding that the only way for a man to avoid the temptations of an old mistress is not through willpower, but by entirely removing himself from her geographic domain.

Argento dominates the screen with her smoldering presence and refreshingly crude sexuality, which breaks the mold for on-screen carnality. What you get in the end is all the alluring, titillating trappings of the period piece, minus the stodgy formalities

The Last Mistress Directed by Catherine Breillat. Starring Asia Argento, Fu'ad Ait Aattou, Claude Sarraute, Roxane Mesquida