It should go without saying that a movie dealing explicitly with adolescent sexuality and statutory rape will challenge even the most open-minded filmgoer.
The question with Fat Girl, French director Catherine Breillat's latest exploration of female sexuality, is whether this film wants to tell a story or simply make a statement.
It struggles to strike an uneasy - and sometimes queasy - balance between the two, and never really pulls it off.
Fat Girl is a snapshot of the love-hate relationship between two sisters, the beautiful and conniving 15-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida) and her sullen, overweight 12-year-old sister Anais (Anais Reboux).
While on a seaside holiday with their parents, Elena and Anais meet the handsome Italian law student Fernando (Libero de Rienzo) at an outdoor cafe.
While Anais busies herself wolfing down a banana split, Elena skips the usual pleasantries and begins making out with Fernando, who is easily 10 years her senior.
A night or two later the tryst progresses to the bedroom that Elena and Anais share. Anais pretends to sleep while her sister and Fernando begin painfully awkward negotiations for Elena's virginity in a 20-minute scene that is difficult to sit through but more difficult to ignore.
Elena, for all her feigned sophistication, wants the fairy-tale love story. Fernando lies to her, and not only do we know he's lying, Elena knows it as well. Their exchanges are hard to watch because they ring so true.
The sex and nudity which caused Fat Girl to be banned in Ontario is far less shocking than Breillat's frank handling of the dance of desire.
Simply watching Elena and Fernando together feels so voyeuristic that the fact the two of them get fully naked is almost secondary.
After their romance is eventually consummated, the sisters' mother (Canadian actress Arsinee Khanjian) finds out about the affair, and the tearful girls are quickly packed up in the car for a brutally uncomfortable and foreboding trip home.
It's impossible to talk about Fat Girl without addressing the film's final five minutes, the subject of much debate among filmgoers and critics alike. Without giving the whole thing away, the ending comes literally out of nowhere and makes such a sudden, shocking impact that audiences might feel betrayed or even sickened.
Unfortunately, it also torpedoes just about all of the film's merits to that point. You can argue that one of the characters, in a very twisted way, got what she wished for, and in fact that's the suggestion made by the final line of dialogue. But cripes. Is it shock for shock's sake? A way of wrapping up a movie that might otherwise have just trailed off? Vicious irony? A dream sequence?
Whatever the case, Breillat's even-handed and honest weaving of character and tension goes sailing out the window, and any glimpses of truth and humanity she showed us are rendered pointless and almost cruel.
In the end the film leaves audiences feeling almost as exploited as Elena herself. Maybe that was the idea, maybe not. Either way, Fat Girl is a film that will not be easily forgotten, but it might be remembered for the wrong reasons instead of the right ones.
(This film is rated R)
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