Here’s something to ponder through the lulls of “Last Summer:” Can a film without much spark really be said to fizzle? Such thoughts danced across many a mind at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Catherine Breillat’s scandal-courting transgression drama mostly inspired yawns.
More inert than inept, “Last Summer” arrived in Cannes with fraught expectations: This is Breillat’s first film in a decade and a faithful remake of May el-Toukhy’s acclaimed “Queen of Hearts” — and within the Venn diagram of cinephiles who impatiently awaited Breillat’s follow-up to 2013’s “Abuse of Weakness,” and journalists who reviewed and celebrated that 2019 Danish drama you could probably fit the entire Palais.