Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)It upsets me that reviewers have focused on the issues of weight and female competition and jealousy that do exist in this film, but completely ignore the major point of this film. Breillat gives us a brutally honest portrayal of female "baptism" into sexuality. It is not pretty, or romantic, or even sensual (as the socially astute "fat girl" realizes). The older sister, whose bed is surrounded by issues of Cosmo, appropriately enough) is hyper-feminized, and believes that she needs to look as if she stepped off the pages of Cosmo to get and keep and please a man--the most important tasks a woman is given by our culture. Her younger sister is less accepting of these--in fact she repeatedly says that she wants to lose her virginity to someone she doesn't love (a fact consistenly ignored by reviewers in their reviews, and vital to understanding the ending and the distinction between the two sisters). The shocking ending is so significant in this regard--Breillat dares us to question the nature of female adolescent sexual experiences, and to blur the line between consensual and nonconsensual sex in the context of female adolescent sexual awakening. I believe that the consistent overemphasis on weight, (note the strange translation of A Ma Soeur to Fat Girl???) which certainly is an important underpinning of all that transpires in the film, is to the detriment of fostering open discussion of the issue of sexuality; I can only assume that this stems from an inability on the part of the public to get past the reality that adolescent females are in fact sexually active, do not have adequate and reliable resources and information to deal with newfound feelings and cultural expectations and norms, and face often traumatic circumstances as a result.
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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.
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