If cinema often attempts to stoke our erotic fantasies, Catherine Breillat’s films serve as a counterpoint. The French filmmaker and novelist is less concerned with eroticism than with the power that sex represents. And in her remake of the Danish film Queen of Hearts, Breillat brings her icy, unwaveringly sober sensibilities to one of the most common of American pop cultural sex fantasies. Last Summer somehow feels tight, open and leisurely, and cloaked in dread all at once. At their home in the suburbs of Paris, we see Anne, an attorney who advocates for victims of sexual abuse, with her older husband, Pierre. Enter Théo, Pierre’s 17-year-old son from a prior marriage. Anne and Théo’s gradual bonding is among Breillat’s finest hours as a filmmaker. No scene is merely a preamble toward sex, as the preambles themselves and their motherlode of baggage are the true subjects of Last Summer.–Slate