Director: Catherine Breillat (France, Norway). Year of Release: 2023
A teenage girl is sitting opposite a counsellor. The counsellor is blonde, and very stern. She asks the girl how many boys she has seen this year, and how many of them she had sex with. Although she tries to reassure the girl that she’s only saying what the prosecution will argue, she could work a bit more on her interpersonal skills. The girl sits there looking terrified. Nonetheless, you expect that her questioner is a formidable opponent in court.
After the opening credits roll, Anne returns to the luxury home which she shares with her husband Pierre and their two adopted daughters. Pierre is a businessman who tells Anne dull stories about how no-one understands someone in his position. They currently have a live-in visitor Theo, Pierre’s son from his previous marriage. Despite his pasty body, Theo enjoys walking around with his top off. He is sullen and only communicates with his father in grunts, and only when he has to.
Anne and Pierre have functioning but emotionless sex. She finds his friends as boring as his conversation. When things get too much for her, she pours herself another glass of wine or goes off to her sister’s hairdressing salon, but there’s only so many time you can get your hair done. Theo is 17 years old, pretty in a bland Timothèe Chalamet way, and seems to have a crush on his stepmother. In one important scene, both Anne and Theo concede that they each have no friends.
Pretty much from the start of the film, I had a nagging feeling of familiarity. It wasn’t long before I realised: the plot is identical to Queen of Hearts, one of my favourite films of last year. I first became of aware if Queen of Hearts when it hit Berlin cinemas just a couple of months ago, but it was released in 2019 and presumably delayed because of Covid. Which gave Catherine Breillat plenty of time to produce a remake.
On many occasions this feels like a scene for scene remake – certain shots, which do little to move the plot forwards, are retained. We see Anne reluctantly joining her daughters and stepson for a swim, or a break-in which Theo has construed to gain attention. Others scenes are changed. Anne still looks uncomfortable when Theo brings a girlfriend back to the house, but in this version leaves out the excruciating scene where she listens to them having noisy sex in the room above.
Tellingly, Anne is given some culpability which Queen of Hearts exonerates from her. Unlike in the original, she instigates sex with her stepson and clearly leads him on. She is the victim of her own impulsiveness, pleased that someone so young could find her attractive while remaining aware that that what she is doing is wrong. On more than one occasion, Anne tries to break up with Theo. But just when she thinks she’s out, they pull her back in.
But Anne’s innocence at the beginning of the affair makes her more culpable when she finally betrays Theo. In Queen of Hearts, Anne is swept along by events. Here she makes a calculated play for her stepson, presumably as a way of escaping her listless marriage. She tells herself (and Theo) that she does not want to sleep with him, but just can’t help herself. Which makes her decision to break things off all the more cool and calculated.
There are other minor differences. For no obvious reason (but then again, why not?) Anne’s daughters have a South-East Asian background. Maybe it’s to emphasise the fact that they’re adopted – something which is used to emphasize Anne’s vulnerability when she explains to Theo that she couldn’t have kids after an early abortion. But like many of the small changes from the original, there feels to be a sense of change for the sake of showing that the films are not identical.
And then we come to the new ending. For most of the time, the plot of Im Letzten Sommer is pretty indistinguishable from that of Queen of Hearts (the reviewers who say the one is “loosely based” on the other either haven’t seen Queen of Hearts or have had time to forget it). The one point it strays wildly from the original comes shortly before the end. For the sake of avoiding Plot Spoilers I won’t get into exactly what happens, but let’s just say that I didn’t find it to be an improvement.
The new ending significantly changes what the film is about. Queen of Hearts is about the abuse of power – how rich people are able to use their money and influence to get out of trouble, even if they are women. Letzen Sommer is more committed to the doomed romance, and prefers emphasising the cursed love affair. While this may appeal more to a sense of personal tragedy, it also serves to let the rich and powerful off the hook.
What is the point in remaking a film? Sometimes it helps to bring a story to an audience which is unprepared to see something mediated through subtitles, however good it is. And yet, I saw both of these films synchronised into German. I don’t know if I’d have liked Im Letzten Sommer more if I hadn’t seen Queen of Hearts, but for much of the time it was repeating scenes with which I was already familiar. As the execrable Jean Marie Le Pen said, people prefer the original to the copy.
Worse than that, I think that where the films do differ, Im Letzten Sommer is just not as good as Queen of Hearts. It is not that this is a bad film – it is enjoyable enough, and retains some of the power of the film which it is imitating. And yet you do find yourself wondering, just what is the point in this? It is too close to the original to really qualify as an innovative film, while not being quite as daring.
If you haven’t seen Queen of Hearts, this is probably a good bet. If you have, prepare to be a little disappointed.
CinePhil 