FAT GIRL (À MA SOEUR!)
It was feminist critic Laura Mulvey, I believe, who claimed that her goal was
to eliminate all pleasure from movies. She needn't look much farther than the
films of French sensation Catherine Breillat, who makes not just movies joyless
but sex as well. In her previous effort, Romance, Breillat combined
humorless pretentiousness with sophomoric shock effects to elicit boredom and
unintentional laughter. Little pleasure there. Here she combines charmless
characters and gratuitous shock effects to elicit distaste and irritation.
Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), the title fat girl, is a pouchy 14-year-old
cursed with a vapid, malicious, and thinner older sister, Elena (Roxane
Mesquida), a crass and clueless father, and a brittle mother who chides her
continuously about her overeating. In fact, everybody has something to say
about that, and they might have a point. The family are on vacation at the
seaside and Anaïs is not having much fun, being tortured by Elena's
pathetic pursuit of older boys and by the inane monologues and tunes Breillat
compels her to amuse herself with in her solitude. The centerpiece of the film
is a 10-minute-long interlude in which tacky Fernando (Libero De Rienzo)
clumsily coaxes Elena into sex acts while Anais looks on numbly from the
neighboring bed. Men! A bold blow against the tyranny of the male gaze and for
the liberation of the female object? Maybe so, but for me the man with the ax
couldn't come soon enough. At the Cable Car March 4-7.
Issue Date: March 1 - 7, 2002
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