The Last Mistress is a 2007 French-Italian film based on the novel Une vieille maîtresse by the French writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. It stars Asia Argento and Fu'ad Aït Aattou as the two main characters. The movie was directed by the French filmmaker Catherine Breillat and was selected for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
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Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly was a French novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary critic. He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitly concerned with anything supernatural. He had a decisive influence on writers such as Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Henry James, Leon Bloy, and Marcel Proust.
Portrait by Émile Lévy, 1882.
Image: Barbey signature 2
Caricature by André Gill, c. 1880.
Portrait by Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran, 1860.