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Fat Girl (French: À ma sœur!, lit. 'To My Sister!') is a 2001 drama film written and directed by Catherine Breillat, and starring Anaïs Reboux and Roxane Mesquida. It was released in certain English-speaking countries under the alternative titles For My Sister and Story of a Whale.[2] The film's plot follows two young sisters as they deal with coming-of-age, sibling rivalry, and desire while on vacation with their family.

Fat Girl
Theatrical release poster
French	À ma sœur!
Directed by	Catherine Breillat
Written by	Catherine Breillat
Produced by	Jean-François Lepetit
Starring	Anaïs Reboux Roxane Mesquida Libero De Rienzo Arsinée Khanjian Romain Goupil Laura Betti
Cinematography	Yorgos Arvanitis
Edited by	Pascale Chavance
Music by	Fabrice Nguyen Thai Jean-Paul Jamot
Production companies	Flach Film CB Films Arte France Cinéma Immagine & Cinema Urania Pictures
Distributed by	Rezo Films (France) Istituto Luce (Italy)
Release dates	10 February 2001 (2001-02-10) (Berlin) 7 March 2001 (2001-03-07) (France) 15 June 2001 (2001-06-15) (Italy)
Running time	86 minutes
Countries	France Italy
Languages	French Italian English
Box office	$765,705[1]

Plot

Anaïs and her older sister, Elena, are vacationing with their parents on the French seaside. Bored of staying in their vacation home, the two walk into town while discussing relationships and their virginities. Although the conventionally attractive Elena has been promiscuous, she is saving actual intercourse for someone who loves her, while overweight Anaïs thinks it is better to lose one's virginity to a "nobody" just to get it over with.

They meet an Italian law student, Fernando, at a cafe. Later, Fernando sneaks into the girls' bedroom for a liaison with Elena. Anaïs is awake and watches their entire interaction. After a conversation about Fernando's previous relationships with other women, Elena consents to have sex with him but backs out at the last minute. Frustrated, Fernando pressures her through various means, including threatening to sleep with some other woman just to alleviate himself. Finally, Elena is coerced into anal sex as a "proof of love," although it is obviously a painful experience for her.

In the morning, Fernando asks for oral sex from Elena before he leaves, but Anaïs has had enough and tells them to let her sleep in peace. The next day, the girls and Fernando go to the beach. Anaïs sits in the ocean in her new dress and sings to herself while Elena and Fernando go off alone together. Later, as the girls are reminiscing about their childhood together back at the house, Elena reveals Fernando gave her a ring while at the beach. Anaïs openly expresses her suspicions about Fernando's intentions. That night, Elena gives up her virginity to Fernando as Anaïs silently cries on the other side of the room.

Later, Fernando's mother arrives at the vacation house, asking for the ring Fernando gave to Elena back, as it belongs to her and is one of a collection of pieces of jewelry from past lovers that she keeps. On discovering Elena and Fernando's relationship, their mother angrily decides to drive back from Les Mathes to their home in Paris. On the way back, she becomes tired and decides to sleep at a rest stop, where a man smashes the windshield of their car with an axe, kills Elena, and strangles their mother while ripping her clothes. When Anaïs gets out of the car and starts backing away, he takes Anaïs into the woods and rapes her. When the police arrive the next morning, Anaïs, recalling her conversation with Elena about virginity, insists he did not rape her.

Cast

• Anaïs Reboux as Anaïs Pingot
• Roxane Mesquida as Elena Pingot
• Libero De Rienzo as Fernando
• Arsinée Khanjian as Mrs. Pingot
• Romain Goupil as François Pingot
• Laura Betti as Fernando's mother
• Albert Goldberg as the killer

Production

Breillat's experience during principal photography inspired her 2002 film Sex Is Comedy, which revolves around shooting a sex scene from the film. Mesquida reprised the scene for the later film. Principal photography took place during in Les Mathes, France[3] from late 1999 to early 2000.[4]

Catherine Breillat revealed she had a big concern about censorship because in the movie you could see Anaïs's breasts. "I actually wanted her not to have breasts, but her body changed between casting and the end of shooting. It's funny that, if she had been flat-chested, it wouldn't have been an issue", director said.[5]

Release

Critical reception

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 73% based on 86 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "The controversial Fat Girl is an unflinchingly harsh but powerful look at female adolescence."[6] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100 based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[7]

Fat Girl got an "A" from Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly[8] and was called a "startling vision of the prickly crawlspace between innocence and sexual awakening" by Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine.[9] Carla Meyer of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote the film "[e]xposes the less sexy things that lust can awaken, like viciousness, deceit and amoral longing".[10]

Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote "Reboux's extraordinary performance conveys Anaïs's mixture of precocious insight, animal canniness and vulnerability so powerfully that it ranks among the richest screen portrayals of a child ever filmed".[11] In a review for Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert wrote "There is a jolting surprise in discovering that this film has free will, and can end as it wants, and that its director can make her point, however brutally".[12]

David Stratton of Variety praised the cinematography by Yorgos Arvanitis, calling the film "beautifully photographed and framed".[13] Neil Smith of BBC said that "Breillat has fashioned another characteristically raw and honest portrait of sexual relations".[14]

Controversy

Fat Girl was banned in Ontario by the Ontario Film Review Board in late 2001 due to objections regarding the frank representation of teenage sexuality.[15] American film critic Wheeler Winston Dixon noted that the film was not only banned in Ontario, but was "severely restricted to adult audiences throughout the world". Dixon described the film as a "harrowing tale of a 13-year-old girl's coming of age as her 15-year-old sister embarks on a series of sexual relationships", featuring "explicit sexual scenes" in a "brutal narrative structure."[16] The ban in Canada was eventually overturned and the film played in several theatres in 2003.[17]

Accolades

In 2001, the film won the Manfred Salzgeber Award at the 51st Berlin International Film Festival[18] and the France Culture Award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.[19]

References

External links

• Fat Girl at IMDb
• Fat Girl at AllMovie
• Fat Girl: Sisters, Sex, and Sitcom an essay by Ginette Vincendeau at the Criterion Collection
• Fat Girl: About the Title an essay by Catherine Breillat at the Criterion Collection
• Press kit from Flach Film

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