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Fat Girl - Criterion Collection | 
 enlarge | Director: Catherine Breillat
Actors: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian, Romain Goupil
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.30
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Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 14239
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 86 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: DFAT060D
ISBN: 0780029089
UPC: 037429197721
EAN: 9780780029088
ASIN: B0002V7O10
Theatrical Release Date: 2001
Release Date: October 19, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Ships first class from New York City. All items are official products. We have a positive feedback rating of 96% - buy with confidence!
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Amazon.com
Fat Girl is a typically shocking, utterly discomfiting provocation from director Catherine Breillat, whose excursions into female psychology and movie sexuality are anything but clinical. (See 36 Fillette and Romance for further proof.) Two adolescent sisters journey to the seaside on vacation with their parents; the younger sister is overweight and brooding, the older girl a beauty who attracts the attention of a smooth-talking boy. Much of the film is built around two painstaking seduction scenes, characteristically shot by Breillat with both comic and horrific overtones and long, uncomfortable takes. The final section then tips into an outright descent into hell--you can never let your guard down with Breillat. So complicated were the seduction scenes that Breillat subsequently made a feature about the shooting of them, Sex Is Comedy. Fat Girl was released under an alternate title, A ma soeur!, but Fat Girl, in English, is Breillat's original and preferred title. --Robert Horton
Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 Not sure I understand why it's so controversial... October 10, 2008
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
So I've now finally seen a Catherine Breillat film. And it's been a month, and I'm still not exactly sure how I feel about it. For a film that runs less than ninety minutes, it tends to the long-winded and didactic. On the other hand, it's one of the few serious films to treat adolescent sexuality with the directness (and, in some perverse way, the reverence) it deserves. On the third hand (can I borrow one of your hands?), Breillat, in her quest for realism of the body, throws out realism of the emotions altogether; in some ways it's a filmed version of one of those awful novels where characters are laughing one second, crying the next, and then full of gritty determination-- and dry cheeks-- and instant later. The characters put on and take off emotions as if they were underwear to be paired with a particularly odd-colored dress. The fourth hand? Well, we'll give that to the ending, which I have since found out (thanks to reading many reviews and a couple of flame wars on IMDB) is considered "shocking", "unrealistic", and "too pat". I, ever the contrarian, found it none of those things a month before I read all this; in fact, it was the only ending that made sense, given much of the dialogue that had come before it.
The plot concerns two sisters, fifteen-year-old nymphette Elena (Sheitan's Roxane Mesquida) and twelve-year-old Anais (Anais Reboux), who's supposed to be the plain one of the two. (I disagreed throughout the film, as I often do; the whole reason I got so confused by The Truth About Cats and Dogs was that Janeane Garofalo was supposed to be the plain one. I don't get it.) The two of them and their mother (Arsinee Khanjian of Code Inconnu) are on holiday at the beach for the summer. Anais resolves to lose her virginity; Elena just wants to explore, while keeping hers intact. There are a number of discussions about this, and it's during these discussions (which also point to the "long-winded" and "didactic" charges above) that the emotional instability appears; the two girls are picking at one another one second and the closest of confidantes the next. How does that work, exactly? Oh, I forgot: it doesn't in real life. In any case, Elena finds herself a boyfriend, the older, slicker Fernando (My House in Umbria's Libero de Rienzo), while Anais, who, again, is supposed to be the plain one, has to imagine trysts with landmarks and lawn furniture. To go farther would be entering spoiler country, but I think you can plot the course pretty easily from there.
There are good things about Fat Girl, and there are bad things about it. I can't make a recommendation either way; I think this is one of those movies that everyone who sees it will feel slightly differently about, assuming they don't tar it with the overly-wide (and inappropriate, given the treatment of the subject matter) brush of obscenity. What you take away from it will, ultimately, be based on what you bring to it. Proceed accordingly. ***
 Save your money and time Read This ... ! July 28, 2008
sweet-one (here ...)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
WARNING !!!
SPOILER ALERT
Save yourself an hour and a half of garbage ... Read This.
So the film drags along for over and hour. The skinny 15 yr old sister who is still a virgin and prefers to keep her virginity gets sodomized in front of her little obese 12 yr old sister by this italian college guy.
Then she finally decides to lose her virginity to this guy, once again in front of her little sister. The little fat girl sobs and cries while this is happening.
Once the guy gets what he wanted he's gone.
The mom finds out about what happened gets upset and they all get in the car to drive back home from their vacation.
The mom pulls over at a rest stop to get some sleep. Mom and skinny girl fall asleep. Fat sister stays awake in the back seat (eating which she enjoys very much).
Suddenly out of nowhere some psychotic killer smashes the front window and smashes the skinny sister's head with an axe while fat little sister watches in terror, then grabs mom by the neck and chokes her to death.
Drags little sister into the woods and rapes her, but thankfully doesn't kill her.
THE END
sneaking in the porn... May 9, 2008
Robert Barrera (St. Petersburg, Florida United States)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Relevant, but shocking subject matter, plus out of the blue "What the heck..." ending. This film, almost 8 years old is undoubtedly innovative, which I appreciate. My fear is that Hollywood is chomping at the bit ready to stretch the boundaries of what censors and the mainstream American viewing public should be watching. As in "The Piano" where a lead actor is so young that they aren't allowed to view the finished product, one must question the moral aspect in terms of child abuse.
One of the better films of this genre February 23, 2008
Gogol (England)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Title was probably not the best in the world but the film is certainly not as bad as the title may suggest.
2 teenage girls go on holiday to their summer house with mum and dad. One a girl who knows herself to be attractive and the other a chubby girl, out of place and out of step with her older sister. The older sister has all but embraced adulthood while the younger one still clings to her childhood. The older sister dresses like a typical teenage girl while the younger is plain and shabbily dressed.
In no time at all the older sister meets a young man who has his own car, speaks a couple of languages and obviously has a bit of money to throw about. The 2 begin a relationship with the younger sister dragging along behind which eventually leads to the older sister sleeping with her new found boyfriend.
Without going into too much detail of the plot it is an exploration of coming of age, first sexual encounters and the consequences. In this the film is fairly realistic in how it examines this. The boy using whatever means he can to get what he wants, the naive younger girl who thinks herself far more grown up than she really is and our 'fat girl' left at the side.
While some have mentioned they found the sex scene uncomfortable (the actress obviously was a lot older) It does go on probably more than is really necessary the film does however explore to some extent her own personal emotions both towards herself and her older sister. What does concern me however was just how old was the younger sister when this film was made?
The ending while shocking has almost nothing to do with the actual film and quite why the director chose to end the film in this way is anyone's guess. Maybe he just wanted the extra shock value.
 Suddenly, Last Summer November 20, 2007
Galina (Virginia, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Catherine Breillat's "Fat Girl" (2001) is an astounding movie that provides uncompromising and unblinking look at the relationship between two teenage sisters, and their first sexual experiences. The older sister, 15 years old Elena, has no problems attracting boys' attention and sexual desire and while on the family Summer vacation, she meets an older, more experienced boy, who will say and promise anything to seduce her. There are two long, thorough and uncomfortable scenes of seducing Elena that take place in the girls' bedroom with the younger sister, 12 years old Anais, the fat girl of the title not quite asleep. Breillat remembers well what the hell it is to be a teenager, to be confused, frustrated, to think low of yourself, to be ready to enter the world of sexual relationships, to be ready for love, for intimate closeness and to pretend that you don't care about them at all. She also looks closely and with none a gram of sentimentality into siblings' and parents -daughters relationship. The scenes of cruelty and contempt the older sister treats the younger one alternate with rare but poignant moments of tenderness and understanding. Breillat takes us to places we don't go often and we don't want to go but they exist. If you've seen Brellat's movies already, you know that her outlook is not particularly happy, optimistic, or sentimental but "Fat Girl" will shock you as very few movies can. Just when you think that the movie is over and despite the disappointments, embarrassing revelations, and shameless manipulations, life goes on and has so much to offer, Breillat presents you with the final scene that is very difficult to watch and impossible to forget. It does not matter really if the final scene actually took place or was just a fantasy, just the dream projected on the screen.
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