I hated the last Breillat film that I saw because I thought that it perpetuated negative male stereotypes while being pointlessly sexually explicit, but I actually liked The Last Mistress & thought that the sexually explicit nature wasn’t graphic or gratuitous, but relevant to the story. A sumptuous period piece set in early 1800s France that asks the real question of what is a marriage & what makes it last, but the marriage in question isn’t the one that is sanctified by the church, community or law. American audiences may suffer with confusion because the title should have been translated The Old Mistress & then as you are watching the film, the framing device & narrative structure makes more sense. The passionate dysfunction of the main couple is not rationalized, but it is embraced & recognized for what it is: an unhealthy fact of life that only when ignored or denied threatens to harm those who are close to them, but those casualties should have known that once a couple is together, let man not separate.