A Real Young Girl

Catherine Breillat has gained, over the years, a reputation as a particularly provocative female writer - director, and she certainly lives up to that description right from this 1976 film, her directorial debut. Although there is nothing really new here thematically, what makes "Une Vraie Jeune Fille" unlike probably any other coming-of-age film up to that time is Breillat's almost microbiological obsession with touchable things and bodily fluids, including flies, eggs, trees, wax, blood, vomit....and others you can imagine. Charlotte Alexandra is voluptuous and sensual in the title role, but after a while the lack of script becomes painfully evident. ** out of 4.

"A Real Young Girl" is a slice-of-summer-life flick which follows a 17ish school girl's sexual exploration during a summer vacation with her parents on their farm. A brave and visceral character study, this first outing for controversial auteur Catherine Breillat spends 90% of the run examining the fantasies, autoerotic experimentation, and eventual heterosexual encounters of the girl who seems sexually fascinated with all things liquid. Though the film's darkish undercurrents of sexual aberration do portend better things to come from Breillat, it is not particularly interesting as a stand alone piece. Circa 1976 with no apparent remastering, the audio/video quality is poor with color shifts and graininess. Not for those squeamish about graphic sexual content, this film should play best with those interested in psychosexual dramas (B-)

The film is very unusual at times and its sheer sexuality often gets too heavy. However it is certainly worth seeing, simply for its madness. And for the smoking hot Charlotte Alexandra. She alone is worth the price of admission. Shocking that the film's release was held up until 2000 (25 years later!) due to budgetary problems.

The first film from Catherine Breillat, the director of "Romance" ('99), that had, upon it's completion in 1975, caused a ratings scandal in France and, beyond being censored, was banned outright. Tellingly, this year (2000) it finally arrived, with little fanfare, on a screen in Paris as, literally across the street at the MK2 Odeon, another controversial film "Baise-Moi" (2000) was causing riots that led to the film being pulled from cinemas.

"Une Vraie Jeune Fille" showcases all of the obsessions that mark Breillat's work through to "Romance" and in a way it is almost more interesting to see the film in retrospect, in light of the films that she made after it, as the lietmotifs present in all were not only prefigured in the first film, but this first film also comments on them.

A girl returns to her parents house from boarding school for the summer. The situation is stifiling and her father's incestuous desires are more than just suggested, though the girl does little to disuade them. She becomes obsessed with a blue collar employee of her father's and his indifference toward her only increases his presence in her numerous sexual fantasies.

The film is visceral and, while the camera is often highly subjective, it maintains, via a cool facade deliberately imitating that of 70's soft porn, that lends it a level of objectivity often entirely absent in American cinema (This film will, incidentally, never reach American screens).

In the same way that "Romance" operates, this film, while exploring detailed fantasies, uses its objectivity to resist any psychoanalyzation of its protagonist. It presents only the events, real events merge with fantasy to lend the pornographic journey/discovery a somewhat hallucinatory aspect

Breillat has found a niche as a filmmaker her films are cool to the touch without being deconstructive, placing her somwhere between Godard and pornography and as a result her films lack a certain element of humanity that prevent them from transcending this niche.

No, I couldn't hate this movie but on the other hand it also clearly wasn't made for me. It's perhaps a movie some females can still recognize themselves in, till some extend at least. For me it was just hard to identify with the characters and all of her weird, sexual orientated, fantasies.

It's a movie about a young 14 year old girl (played by an 21 year old by the way) who has obviously started to hit puberty and is about to discover her sexuality. She starts experimenting a bit and we get to see all of her fantasies, that are being put very straight-forward to the screen. It means that the movie features plenty of full frontal female and male nudity but also some really disgusting scenes, as the little girl is really having some dirty thoughts and fantasies. Pissing, puking, worms...should I say more? But then again it's not supposed to be a movie obviously that is supposed to turn you on. It's merely a look into the thoughts and fantasies of a girl who is about to discover her sexual identity for the first time. I really don't think this movie could had been made by a male director. It takes a woman to be able to get into a young girls mind and translate and brings to the screen all of the thoughts and feelings she might be having at that certain period in her life. I admire the movie for what it does and attempts to do but as a male, it just wasn't all that appealing or throughout interesting to me.

As you wouldn't had guessed it already, this movie is being an art-house type of movie. Nothing too heavy, although some of the sequences might still be shocking to some people, since it has some explicit nudity and some gross out moments in it. But it's at least not a movie that is full of itself and tries too desperately to be an arty and creative one, by putting in lots of symbolism and sequences that run overlong.

Still you feel that the movie could had done way more with its subject. It could at least had made it a bit more interesting to watch. At times now I was really thinking 'why am I even watching this'. Not that it's boring though, the movie was also too short for that but it's also really a movie I could easily had done without.

If you are female you might still get something out of this movie and recognize yourself in some parts of the movie or its main character, though I still somewhat doubt this. Else females are way more dirty than males if this is the case.

6/10

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