À MA SŒUR !
FAT GIRL

Writer/Director: Catherine Breillat

Cast: Anaïs: Anaïs Reboux; Elena: Roxane Mesquida; Fernando: Libero de Rienzo; Mother: Arsinée Khanjian.

Awards: Manfred Salzgeber Award, Berlin Int’l Film Festival (2001).

Running time: 83 minutes
Year of production: 2001
Rating: Not rated; WARNING! Adolescent sex, nudity.
Gauge: 16 & 35mm (color)

Language: French

Distributor: Cowboy Pictures




“A work of bold irrationality and highly questionable taste, Fat Girl is as fascinating as it is discomfiting and as intelligent as it is primal. From first shot to last, France’s foremost bad girl has made an extremely good movie--and maybe even a great one.” J. Hoberman, The Village Voice.
FatGirl

Breillat returns to the fertile territory of her 1988 breakthrough film, 36 Fillette, with another frank, clear-eyed portrait of adolescent female sexuality. Anaïs, a chubby 12-year-old, and her svelte, sultry 15-year-old sister, Elena, go on a vacation with their self-absorbed parents to the south of France. Before long Elena meets the handsome and eager Fernando, an Italian law student, whom she invites to her bedroom (shared with Anaïs). After a prolonged seduction, during which Fernando mounts every possible argument to convince the scared but desirous Elena to give up her virginity, Elena resorts to other means of satisfying him. The entire episode is witnessed by Anaïs who provides a distancing device, directing the viewer’s attention toward the sisters’ contradictory feelings about sex. In their next meeting Elena gives herself to Fernando, only to have the entire holiday brusquely terminated by her outraged mother when she finds out. Anaïs, herself preoccupied with sex, is both jealous and critical of her big sister and in the gruesome and shocking finale gets her own back. The palpable empathy and antagonism between the sisters forms the backbone of the story, and the different ways in which they lose their virginity reflects their different personalities, bodies and beliefs.

 
PHOTO Courtesy of Cowboy Pictures  
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