36 fillette

36 Fillette is an aimless journey of coming of age by a 14 year old girl played extremely well by Delphine Zentout. She talks her brother into taking her to a disco where she is eventually taken advantage of by a much older man played by Etienne Chicot. She is an angry girl whose home life leaves a lot to be desired. This film really has no point other than to continually think of ways for an older man to have sex with a 14 year old girl. Pass on this meaningless story. Too bad as the acting was very good.

This film was made in France in the late 1980s, but it is unimaginable that it could be made in Hollywood then or now. The US studio mind set sees adolescence in 'American Pie' terms and the current wave of legislative hysteria over child porn precludes any thoughtful treatment of how adolescents deal with their emerging sexuality.

Working outside these constraints in France Catherine Breillat has been able to craft a film which is occasionally startlingly frank but never exploitive. She looks unblinkingly at the unruliness of adolescent sexual behavior and does not shy away from depicting the protagonist of the title as part seducer as well as part victim.

Delphine Zentout is sensationally good in depicting a young girl with rampaging hormones in a hurry to become a woman. She plays her as unashamedly surly, self absorbed and difficult, without a trace of cuteness.

This is a film in which every note rings true.

First off, I've got to say that the DVD of this had quite possibly the worst transfer quality I've ever seen, so undoubtedly this had some kind of effect on my viewing of the film in the long run. But, that said, I thought it was pretty good. I must say though, that Catherine Breillat seems to have a very narrow vision. This really felt in many ways like a warm-up for "Fat Girl!", although I didn't think this was quite as good as that was. It somewhat lacked the extreme dynamics and tension that made that film more riveting. This was actually a bit boring at times, especially toward the beginning. Also, the cinematography was completely unremarkable (again, unlike "Fat Girl!", which used long, uncomfortable single-takes to great effect). And there was really too much pointless talking at times. Still, I wouldn't say that it is a bad film at all, really. It definitely gets better as it goes on. It even began to remind me a little of "Palindromes" at times, especially toward the end. I'd say that Breillat is definitely a good filmmaker, but probably not a great one.

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This is a love story off the beaten track clearly in the tradition of Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut, told without prudishness or gratuitous violence.

The title refers to a children's dress size that the 14-year-old lead, Lili, played with snap by Delphine Zentout, is bursting out of. Billed as a "French Lolita," Zentout is not all that fetching at first glance. She's a chubbette with light skin and thick black hair and not exactly pretty. But she has intriguing eyes and a saucy way about her.

Lili is "discovering" her sexuality, but won't let herself be impregnated. The playboy, played with grace and economy by Jean-Pierre Leaud, falls in love with her in spite of himself and "tolerates" her reluctance while being partially satisfied in other ways, one of which we used to call a "cold f..." They are a believable match because sexually they are equal: she precocious, he experienced.

Catherine Beillat directs without sentimentality while guiding Zentout to an interpretation that transcends the American brat style and leads us to a thoughtful view of feminine sexuality.

Early on we can clearly see that despite being in a woman's body, this character is still a girl, as she fights like a kid with her brother. She's only 14 and seems eager to lose her virginity, but has both a repugnance for the people around her and a sense of vulnerability when she puts herself in compromising situations, like the hotel room of a middle-aged man. She flirts and teases to test her power over men but is mixed up about what to do with it once she has it, and I guess it's this liminal period in a girl's life that Breillat is exploring (apparently somewhat autobiographically).

Meanwhile men old enough to be her father (and a woman as well) look at her as fresh prey, making this a pretty creepy story. Her own brother tells a guy in a bar that "She's a juicy pear. Ripe for picking." Ugh. As the film involves repeated encounters between the girl (16 year old Delphine Zentout) and the middle aged guy (39 year old Étienne Chicot) which lead to nudity and sex acts that are as awkward for the characters as they are for the audience, it was a tough one for me to like. It wasn't always clear Breillat wasn't capitalizing on the salacious concept either, and when I read she didn't even know Zentout's age when she cast her and was lucky she had just turned 16 days before shooting started, it made me wonder about her approach to this.

On the positive side there is a degree of empowerment in the girl's character, as she's able to tell the middle-aged guy "no" even after he's been massaging her to arousal, and the next day tells him acerbically "Next time you need to ejaculate, I'm not a sink!" Her father beats her for staying out all night and being a "little sl*t," to which she screams "It's my life, not yours!" When she ultimately decides to lose her virginity to an intellectual boy who likes reading Dostoevsky and Camus, she commands him during the (brief) act to "Stop dribbling on me! What are you waiting for! Go on!" Even though this seems like such a sad group of characters all around (too sad for me, really), there is strength in the girl's smile at the end, and some belief that she'll navigate her way into adulthood on her own terms.

For me what the film could have used more of was the little scene with Jean-Pierre Leaud, who says these lines so skillfully: "We think we're in a rut, but we aren't. The world's a huge place. It's a giant box spring mattress. You bounce on it and land somewhere else. You think you're in a rut, that the world will cave in on you, but it's not true. Just land in a different place."