FANS of arthouse movies rejoice – FilmClub is back at the Tatham Art Gallery in Chief Albert Luthuli Street, Pietermaritzburg, for a new season, starting at 7 pm on Tuesday, February 2.

The Last Mistress, directed Catherine Breillat (France, 2007) kicks off a special focus on women directors. It is a slightly a-typical film from Breillat – a sumptuous period drama which chronicles the intense love affair between a young libertine and an outrageously unconventional, sexually assertive woman some years his senior – the latter played with ferocious sensuality by Asia Argento.

Breillat’s earlier films are almost exclusively concerned with exploring the nature of women’s sexuality; but in The Last Mistress she broadens her focus to look at the nature of both male and female desire.

The narrative opens in 1835, with Ryno de Marigny just about to marry the beautiful, wealthy and virginal Hermangarde – a marriage which most of his acquaintances believe to be both scandalous and doomed to failure, given Ryno’s ten-year affair with the notorious Vellini.

The history of that affair emerges as Ryno confesses his past to Hermangarde’s surprisingly broadminded grandmother.

Breillat’s film pits 18th century social and sexual mores against those of the more morally rigid emerging middle class of the 1830s, and finds that neither of these social and moral apparatuses can adequately account for, let alone contain, the force that is erotic love.

Entry is R35 per person and The Tatham Coffee shop will be offering a soup and bread supper from 6 pm onwards (at a very reasonable R40 per person). Safe parking is available in the government parking lot next to the gallery.