Ilsa for GR Film Buffs:
Oft times a brilliant woman with interesting ideas about how to craft her life is seen as controversial. She has to state the obvious: that woman is a powerhouse of songs and stories. This seems to be the time-honored way to get her ideas out into the market place. Did the viewers among us certainly read how George Sands got all suited up in name and dress? (Any reminder of the pant-wearing, self-empowered woman who mystified classical composer Chopin through his musical rollercoasters makes me that much more proud to be a woman.) The Last Mistress is a wonderful walk into the mind and soul of such a woman overflowing with a zest for life bubbling up from deep within, tingling from every hair follicle as she toys with morays as a stage from which she performs. She lives at a time of external constraints where lineage and money allow a lifestyle abhorred by the bourgeoisie.
Period pieces draw us in as the layers of lace and brocade frames the skin forming a soft boundary for the hot aspects of thought and feeling few of us dare to display.
The times are changing yet this is a classic sorrier of duty and passion, of virginal and wanton, of control and natural emotional weather. This is a beautiful film, find it and see it with your mate, lover or friends. If only one more woman unleashed her natural Mother Nature and followed her powerful estrogen, the universe would reach stasis and balance. What a dance life would be in the summer of our hormonal lives.
In the question and answer session after the screening Opening Night of this magic San Francisco Film Festival, the brilliant Catherine Breillat toyed with our American audience, that this story can be seen playing out in the context of our very own Bill and Hillary Clinton!
note: sorry guys, you'll have to track this one down on www.thefilmconnection.org, or at another international fest coming your way, it was only screened once on opening night, see Ilsa's coverage the Opening Party scene here.
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