Para Minha Irmã

Somehow this film picked up the English title 'A Fat Girl'. How inappropriate, I thought, because for most of the film, the romance of the elder, more attractive sister takes center-stage. It is only at the end, after some horrible things have happened, that it becomes clear that the film has been leading us to understand the fat sister Anais's strange reaction to what happened to her. I have read criticism of the violence late in the film, as not having flowed out of what has gone before. Such criticism misses the point of the movie, I think, which is about the contrast between Anais's first sexual experience and the lovely Elena's, and Anais's acceptance of rape as being preferable to being in love with the boy, as Elena had been, when we and Anais watched Elena's first intercourse.

I thought the acting in this film wonderful, and Anais Reboux, as the fat girl is an outstanding find. This is a touching film, with real characters with whom to empathize, especially the two girls, both young and romantic, one with a saving touch of cynicism.

Brelliat drives me a little crazy. She is an observer of one small corner of life and seems incidentally a filmmaker. You get different editions of her observations on the distance of young sex across which we throw ropes.

So the question is which is the best and whether each one that follows adds something new, worthwhile.

The best to my mind was "A Real Young Girl" of thirty years ago. It had an honesty that everything subsequently lacks. By this I mean you could feel the filmmaker's emotions quite apart from whatever was happening on screen.

What we have here are two scenes. The first is hugely promising: a pretty girl loses her virginity while witnessed by her much younger sister. Drawn out circling of the boy. Set up in a way that we share in the discomfort as witness and some of the charm of the situation. We are seducer, voyeur, victim.

Brelliat knew this well enough to build a whole different movie about the nature of this voyeurism, "Sex is Comedy." You need to see the two together to get the folding.

The problem with Brelliat is that she has these emotional insights and she can pose scenes. But she has no skill at all in seeing the larger shape of the narrative. She doesn't understand the long form and the structure of a story. Lacking this, we get only scenes, and here we have only two. The second one is brutal, as if the first demanded the second.

The only thing to recommend this is the effect you get from watching the first scene. You quickly realize that because you are watching, you are part of the damage she sketches.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Director Breillat is back and, as she did with "Romance", pushing the bounds of censorship in an intellectually challenging fashion. The story follows the sexual development of two sisters in their early teens. Their middle class family embody the usual social mores and protective attitudes. Moreover, the story makes us aware of the legal dilemma of under age sex, undertaken as a matter of conscious choice and with proper protection by the 15-year old (older) sister with a boyfriend only a few years her senior (ie the relationship would be legal in Netherlands but not in many countries, including France). These are two fairly "normal" sisters, although the younger one is excessively overweight and only fantasizes about getting a boyfriend. There is some possible interpretation that the 15-year old's psychological development would progress more soundly were she not (initially) fettered by taboos over her own virginity. In one scene, a TV in the background has a Breillat-type character being interviewed and giving her philosophy about the intrinsic nature of sex, how it is something common to us all and that can be understood by anyone, and that we are all alike inasmuch as no-one is perfect. The characters and scenes are painted brilliantly, the sibling rivalry coupled with intense sisterly bonding, the mother driving at night and, as many people will have, with a lack of sleep and so not as perfectly safely as normal. It is the realism and ordinariness of the situations that keep us on the edge of our seats. The dialogue has the realism that suggests youngsters may have suggested some of the lines, with their observations that have the power to startle us out of complacency. The use of actors so young in fairly explicit scenes will be a matter of great concern, but Breillat is serious about her work and convinces us that she is not pandering to sensationalism but raising valid questions about how we effectively handle the challenges presented by precocious adolescents. The film is more polished than Breillat's earlier work and has an unnerving denouement, well-delivered.

This is a film that is difficult to say you "liked." It gives a view of the different facets of cruelty. Anais (the "Fat Girl" of the title) is buffeted with cruelty and indifference at every turn--that directed toward her and that she witnesses. Her corpulence is both an attempt to insulate herself against these assaults but at the same time, indicative of her internalization of them. But ultimately, the film is similarly an assault on the viewer, be warned. It stings.

At the NY Film Festival's Q&A with Breillat, she expressly forbid seeing "Fat Girl" (as she prefers to call it) as a morality play. She eluded any attempts to draw her into conclusions about her film, insisting that she is not a moralist.

What is clear from the questions she asks, however, is that she views sex with a certain contempt, especially as regards the male role in the act. The men that are in the film are either insensitive, duplicitous or murderous. Breillat's intent is to show how adrift any adolescent girl is when it comes to sexuality and to somehow convey that to an adult audience. She counseled young Anais during filming by saying, "We are making a film that I don't even think you can see when it is done, but it is not for you. It is supposed to scare adults."