Fat Girl - Criterion Collection

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Fat Girl is a typically shocking, utterly discomfiting provocation from director Catherine Breillat, whose excursions into female psychology and movie sexuality are anything but clinical. (See 36 Fillette and Romance for further proof.) Two adolescent sisters journey to the seaside on vacation with their parents; the younger sister is overweight and brooding, the older girl a beauty who attracts the attention of a smooth-talking boy. Much of the film is built around two painstaking seduction scenes, characteristically shot by Breillat with both comic and horrific overtones and long, uncomfortable takes. The final section then tips into an outright descent into hell--you can never let your guard down with Breillat. So complicated were the seduction scenes that Breillat subsequently made a feature about the shooting of them, Sex Is Comedy. Fat Girl was released under an alternate title, A ma soeur!, but Fat Girl, in English, is Breillat's original and preferred title. --Robert Horton

Description

Twelve-year old Anaïs is fat. Her older sister, Eléna, is a teenage beauty. While on vacation with her parents, Anaïs tags along behind Eléna, exploring the dreary seaside town. Eléna meets Fernando, an Italian law student, who seduces her with promises of love, as the ever-watchful Anaïs bears witness to the corruption of her sister's innocence. Precise and uncompromising, Fat Girl (À Ma soeur!) is a bold dissection of sibling rivalry and female adolescent sexuality from one of contemporary cinema's most controversial directors.

Customer Reviews:

Thank the French God for Catherine Breillat........2007-09-14

Catherine Breillat (1948) is a brilliant French filmmaker, director and novelist. Her films take us places we've never been before, and usually outside our comfort zones with their depictions of hard sexual truths. As a result, Breillat is often the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. Her follow-up to Romance (1999), Fat Girl (À Ma soeur!--the more preferable French title) (2001), is Breillat at her provocative best. The coming-of-age film tells the story of two adolescent sisters vacationing in a dreary seaside town with their inattentive parents. The younger 12-year-old sister, Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) is overweight and sullen. The older 15-year-old girl, Eléna (Roxane Mesquida) is a beauty who easily attracts the attention of handsome Italian law student Fernando (Libero de Rienzo) at a local café. Much of the film explores the love-hate dynamics between the siblings, and Anaïs' own vicarious sexual awakening through her sister's experience. (The sex scenes in Fat Girl were so challenging that Breillat made a subsequent film about filming them, Sex Is Comedy.)

So what exactly is Breillat up to in Fat Girl? Ultimately, the film is not so much a coming-of-age, loss-of-virginity film as a film about the sexual politics between men and women, and the games boys will play just to have their way with girls. For many, because of its graphic depiction of teenage sexuality, this film will be disturbing. It is a film that is both hard to watch and harder still to forget. However, Breillat's interest in exploring hard truths about human sexuality is something I admire about French cinema in general and her films in particular. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it would be difficult to find Breillat's intellectual sexual dialogue happening anywhere else in cinema. Like all of Breillat's films, this is a film people should be debating afterwards in cafes, bars, and their bedrooms.

The superb Criterion edition of Fat Girl includes a newly restored high-definition digital transfer with Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks, behind-the-scenes footage, two interviews with Breillat, including a look at the film's alternate ending, French and U.S. trailers, an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and an interview with Catherine Breillat from the French film magazine Positif.

G. Merritt

One of the Worst Films I've Seen.......2007-07-20

The title of this film is a misnomer. ...The "fat girl" is little more than a prop throughout the entire film.

Breillat, who is completely obsessed with male genitalia and shock value, fails to bring the "fat girl" into the spot light at all. Far too much time is spent on the development of her skinny sister's summer romance (in fact, the title of the film should be "Skinny Sister Used for Sex During a Boring Summer Vacation"). This particular actress looks very young and consequently, I found myself to be a little uncomfortable with the sex scene.

"Fat Girl" lulls the viewer to sleep but does manage to bash you upside the head with such blunt force during the last segment--and thats the problem--the ending is so far out there that it fails to resonate with what Ms. Breillat tries to accomplish with the excrutiatingly dull story. What good is shock if it struggles to make sense and fails to show purpose?

"Fat Girl" is a pooor attempt to push boundaries and shock the viewing audience. Definitely NOT recommended.

Disturbingly poignant and human, with top-notch direction and performances.......2007-07-10

The French do coming-of-age films better than anyone else on the planet, and Fat Girl is destined to be the one you'll never forget. It's certainly not pretty, but it'll steal your heart.

Prentious pap posing as art.......2007-05-21

I am a long time fan of French cinema, have lived in France and consider myself a true Francophile. My idea of a perfect movie experience is watching a good French movie in the original language (with English subtitles). However.....this wasn't it.

Under the pretext of being weighty and philosophical this director, whose name I'm trying to forget, has produced a pretentious, ugly, stupid and demeaning movie. Other reviewers here have already said it very well. Nothing here illumines the human condition. Do we know any more about sexuality or anything than we did before? That good looking 20 year old Roman law students like to score? (duh) That foolish young pretty girls with superficial, materialistic, absent parents might fall prey to the guy with the Roman hands? (excuse me..bad joke) (duh) That the fat younger sister might feel bad about herself? (This is news?)

There is nothing truly original presented here. I was not shocked by the sorta graphic sex (the guy was at least very handsome!) nor by the hideous ending. It was boring and prentious...the worst of French film making. I watched the interview with the director, hoping that her comments would shed some light on the movie, which might make me see it in a more favorable way. Yuk...she is really full of herself..."I am the film" she said, (perhaps quoting Louis XIV "I am the state."?) She seemed mean, too, in the way she spoke of how she directs her actors. I hope they were well paid for what they went through. I give the film two stars for their performances. There is one nice scene...the one with the two sisters giggling about their lives together. It's the only one that has anything approaching genuine affection.

For a really good film treatment of a fat girl, see "Georgy Girl," starring Lyn Redgrave.

Dissecting the frailest of emotions .......2007-05-13

What an amazing film. Fat Girl seems to expose just about every insecurity a young, overweight girl could have. The fact that the older sister is a total beauty doesn't placate the problem. The sibling rivalry has its ups and downs that all seems to stem from the competitive nature of the two girls.
The movie advances at a delicate pace. The older sister begins to explore her sexuality by sneaking her older boyfriend in the room late at night. This raises all kinds of moral dilemmas due to their age discrepancies plus the fact that the younger sister sleeps in the same room. Kinda creepy, don't you think?
I really enjoyed the subtle pace of the movie but halfway through I found myself leery of a tragic ending. I was expecting something drastic, like a pregnancy or even a suicide. I hoped the director didn't feel the need for a traumatic ending. Even though I braced myself, I still was totally caught off guard by the final course of events.
My initial reaction was one of disappointment. The ending seemed so forced, like it was simply trying to garner a bold reaction to needlessly justify the film.
However, I reread an an in-depth review by Jenny from NY, and she summed it up in a way that makes some sense. This ending makes the viewer feel shunned or betrayed, the same emotion felt by the characters in the film. That is an excellent point.
Still, I can't decide if the ending was completely stupid or utter genius. I'll have to contemplate that for awhile. I do know that any film that makes you think is a film worth watching.

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