She's Gotta Have It
Within the past decade of Francophone cinema, two of
the most interesting trends have been the parallel
thematic emphases on exploring the filmic frontiers of
non-pornographic sexual explicitness (Pola X,
Sitcom), as well as (frequently queer)
adolescent erotic desires in development (Portrait
of a Young Girl at the End of the '60s in
Brussels, Wild Reeds, Set Me Free),
or more rarely, both (Come Undone). Perhaps
these films have simply been playing catch up to
French filmmaker Catherine Breillat's work, which has
been pushing the taboo boundaries of adolescent
sexuality the hardest and longest. Her early films --
A Real Young Girl (1976), Tapage
nocturne (1979), and 36 Fillette (1987) --
all dealt with young girls' sexual discoveries, using
hardcore imagery. With Romance (1998), Breillat
made a departure and explored adult female sexuality,
which finally found her an American audience, arguably
both in spite and as a result of its extremely graphic
sex scenes. Fat Girl (released in France as
A ma soeur) marks a return to Breillat's
previous concern with the deflowering of teenage
girls.
In Fat Girl, sisters Anais (Anais Reboux) -- a
pasty, plump 13-year-old -- and Elena (Roxane
Mesquida) -- a flirtatious, but still virginal,
attractive 15-year-old -- share a room in their
family's summer house on the Mediterranean. Everywhere
Elena goes she drags Anais along, as per their
mother's (Arsinee Khanjian) orders. As the two sisters
walk through the woods, they talk of sex. Elena has
been holding out to lose her virginity "properly" to
the right man; nonetheless, she has, it would appear,
already experienced just about everything but
intercourse per se. The precocious Anais wants to get
rid of her virginity with an anonymous man. She does
not want to give
herself to any man that she suspects might brag about
it afterwards -- thus why her man must be anonymous.
Despite her voluptuous figure and young age, Anais
speaks very directly of her liberal sexual values and
demonstrates an innate comfort with her own body --
and that what she does with it is nobody's business
but her own.
When they go to the ice cream shop in town, Elena
strikes up a conversation with Italian tourist
Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), while Anais gorges
herself on a banana split. Quickly Elena and Fernando
become an item, spending clandestine moments together
with Anais' ambivalent supervision and occasional
eavesdropping. In response to Elena's real romantic
escapades, Anais has fantastic encounters that reveal
both her flirtatious precocity and her youthful manner
of play acting in the absence of physical experience.
In an inspired sequence in the backyard pool,
she swims back and forth between the ladder and dock,
kissing each inanimate object and talking to them as
if they were romantic rivals. In Anais' fantasy, both
are jealous of her obvious infidelity, and she
remorselessly plays them
off of one another.
Anais' fantasies are, of course, played against the
reality of Elena's physical introduction to sex. One
night, Fernando sneaks into the girls' room and talks
Elena into going all the way. The scene lingers for a
long time, as he must make seemingly endless
confessions of love and promises of devotion before
Elena will finally surrender. Anais, pretending to be
asleep, cries silently because she sees through
Fernando's empty platitudes and faulty
reasoning -- this is the common "betrayal of lovers'
discourse," in Breillat's phrasing. This seduction
sequence's duration and relentless coaxing makes it
one of the most quietly devastating scenes in recent
memory. While Fernando uses neither physical force nor
harsh words, with his verbal manipulation and
emotional violence, he essentially rapes Elena.
Against Elena's abuse, Breillat does not offer any
alternative way for a girl to lose her virginity. In
the film's shocking final minutes, Anais has her first
sexual experience as well, and which follows the same
pattern of manipulation and exploitation as Elena's.
Anais, however, refuses to buy into the lies of the
traumatic event. Elena,
somewhat foolishly, believes that she and Fernando
will be married and that their relationship is true
love; only this justification it seems can soothe the
wounds of her lost innocence. Breillat brings to the
loss of the girls' virginity some truly menacing,
depressing, and erotic elements that make the
experience intensely muddled and complicated, contrary
to more traditional, "romantic," narratives.
The sex in Fat Girl is, however, not the
antiseptic transaction portrayed in Breillat's
Romance, but an all-consuming,
character-defining process of sorting through emotions
and attitudes that convincingly perplexes these
girls. Complementing the film's intensity -- and not
just courting scandal, I would argue -- Breillat
shoots the sex scenes with X-equivalent full nudity
and simulated action. By exposing the physical
vulnerability and uneasiness of the two girls,
Breillat conveys much more about the emotional state
of the characters than films in which characters
discreetly go at it fully clothed or covered by
sheets. The "adult content" of the film, which will be
released unrated, will likely bar adolescents' access
to it. This is unfortunate, as Fat Girl offers
a representation of teen sexual experiences and their
bodies not available to them elsewhere, except,
perhaps, in "adult" erotica and on pedo-porn sites on
the Internet.
