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FAT GIRL Send This Review to a Friend
French writer-director Catherine Breillat's new film "Fat Girl," showcased at both the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival prior to its commercial release, is both a charming and wickedly tough work in keeping with Breillat's reputation for no-holds-barred creativity.
The charm is embodied in the overweight 12-year-old Anais, played most sympathetically by Anais Reboux. She is in the unenviable position of watching her 15-year-old and far more attractive sister Elena, portrayed sexily by Roxane Mesquida, be a magnet for turned-on young men. Anais is both repelled and jealous. She fantasizes about the true love she hopes will come along, and although she would like to lose her virginity, she is fed up with all the hoopla about her sister's preparations to loose hers.
The girls are on summer vacation with their parents and Elena, with Anais tagging along and surly as usual, meets Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), an older Italian law student, who responds to her come-on. When he sneaks into her bedroom the first night, he turns on a full force of the baloney men use to get a girl to have sex. Elena isn't yet ready to go all the way, and Anais must suffer through all of the foreplay, love talk and almosts. Then there is the second night. Breillat makes the episodes amusing as well as explicitly erotic, inevitable yet sad. She also has a wonderfully tender scene between the sisters that shows a love-resentment relationship but also sisterly bonding.
The tough development comes near the end, as Breillat uncorks events that take us by surprise. There is a harrowing buildup as the girls' mother drives them home after the father has returned impatiently from vacation early. The director depicts the moment by moment dangers of driving between huge trucks, with the speeding up, the closing in, the passing and the need to stay alert although tired. But this is not a film to rely on anything as predictable as a car accident. Breillat has something else in mind that will cause us to rethink the whole film to ascertain what it all means.
Is her conclusion merely something to jolt us? Or does it go to the core of her observations? Either way, this is an absorbing, accomplished and powerful work from one of France's top contemporary directors. A Cowboy Pictures release.
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