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Fat Girl



Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along while Elena explores the dreary seaside town. Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student; he seduces her with promises of love, and the ever watchful Anaïs bears witness to the corruption of her sister’s innocence. Fat Girl (À ma soeur!) is not only a portrayal of female adolescent sexuality and the complicated bond between siblings but also a shocking assertion by the always controversial Catherine Breillat that violent oppression exists at the core of male-female relations.

Special Features

- High-definition digital restoration (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Fat Girl
- Two interviews with director Catherine Breillat, one conducted the night after the film’s world premiere at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, the other a look back at the film’s production and alternate ending
- French and U.S. theatrical trailers
- Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, a 2001 interview with Breillat, and a piece by Breillat on the title

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Theodore R. Stockton wrote:In the essays in the liner notes, the director says the title was always "Fat Girl" implying the French title is the one she doesn't like.

I saw this one a few years ago at the theater on my college campus. My friends and I were just floored witht he end. Afterwards we went to get something to eat and discuss it. The consensus was that it was a tack on ending meant to shock you so you remember a lackluster film being more than it was. I disagree with that b/c what happens at the end is exactly what the girl has been wanting throughout the film. Of course when we say I want so and so blah blah blah, we don't actually want it, but here it is, she got what she had been talking about. It's the ultimate nightmare wish fulfillment.

Has anyone seen this director's film Romance?

While Breillat denies any reference, it nevertheless is makes an interesting reading to approach it from a personal perspective.

Catherine was herself a "chubby" teen, while her older sister was both slim and very beautiful (and worked as a model).

The somewhat autobiographical reading is further strenghtend by her making "Sex is Comedy", where she distances herself from the film by stressing the production, the making, rather than the motifs of the characters, as if she made something too personal and now had to unpersonalise it by making it appear staged.

It's very interesting, because in the extras she says it can't be autobiographical because she has never, for example, been fat. What kind of issues does she have about this, or was it just a case of keeping certain details to herself during her interview?

I've always wondered about Sex is Comedy. It seems rather self-serving, not in a bad sense, as I guess anyone making an autobiographical film could be accused of that and it's just to be expected, but I do think that it shows Breillat maybe has a narrow view of men as shown by casting the beautiful Anne Parillaud as her alter-ego and the casting of Roxanne Mesquida in the female role while changing the male role to a different actor. Does this mean that she has no interest in exploring the psychology of the male performance outside of what a prosthetic penis does for their ego, while exploring the mental difficulties the actress has in preparing for her performance? Because by the previous male lead not reprising his role it kind of unbalances the film if it is looked at as a companion to Fat Girl rather than a film in its own right. I also feel a bit embarassed for Libero Di Rienzo for the revelation about his endowment if Sex is Comedy is autobiographical in that sense - he really must have pissed Breillat off! It also takes away from the Roxanne Mesquida character as it does seem that the film is very sympathetically weighted in favour of her character because even if the director finds her female lead frustrating, she at least pays enough attention to her to be irritated!

I'd agree that it looks like it is staging it to make it less personal and in relation to that I was wondering what anyones take is on the relationship between the director and the boyfriend in the film?

Perhaps she is being honest with herself in not understanding male sexuality and therefore is purposefully not dealing with it, but focusing on the female side?

Whilst saying that I find Breillat's take on men rather cliched (and at some points disturbing judging by the range of male figures presented in Romance!) I still look forward to seeing a Breillat film as it is an interesting take on female sexuality and that is where her focus is to the detriment of the male aspects. Its also an interesting opposition to those films where the female characters are used purely as window dressing or characters whose only reason for existence is to get kidnapped or provide another motivation for the male character. I'd go as far as to say that it is not just the rapist but all the male characters in Romance, Fat Girl, 36 Filette and Sex Is Comedy (and from the sound of it Anatomy of Hell) that exist not as fully rounded characters with their own motivations but as expressions of the female characters wishes or facilitators (the rapists in Fat Girl and Romance; the lovers in Romance, Fat Girl and Anatomy of Hell; the older man in 36 Filette) or to act as a plot device (an external motivator) for the women (the father's absence in Fat Girl, the lack of sexual interest from her partner in Romance, the director/boyfriend relationship in Sex is Comedy). So the use of cliched dialogue by these cipher characters is perhaps more understandable, using them to focus attention elsewhere, such as to the girl's reaction to the sweet talk perhaps showing how much this talk is a pretence or a formality to an inevitable sex act - otherwise he wouldn't have got into the room in the first place - and a way of the girl persuading herself rather than listening to the trivialities, but all seen through the eyes of the outside party of the sister (and audience).

I am also interested that she talks up Anais Reboux in Fat Girl and yet makes another film with the 'conventionally' pretty girl. There are of course factors, Breillat wanted to deal with the sex scene, perhaps Anais Reboux did not want to make another film, perhaps Libero Di Rienzo did not want to appear in Sex is Comedy necessitating Gregoire Colin. All these variables, as well as how autobiographical the film was intended to be, are going to have an effect on how I percieve Fat Girl and Sex is Comedy and in a sense all of Catherine Breillat's work.

It would be very interesting to hear a female opinion on the films of Catherine Breillat and their take on sexuality.

EDIT: Having just seen Anatomy of Hell, it was interesting to see that Breillat moves more into viewing events through a male gaze, yet with her own voice providing his voiceover. She could be showing to the audience that these are her ideas as a woman about maleness. The woman acts as a facilitator for the man's awakening in this one. But perhaps we should see all Breillat's work as an abstract expression of herself, in which case all the characters are facilitators of her own exploration into sexuality, rather than fully involved in their story as participants, which is what cinema usually aims at.

hektor wrote: Marie-Helene Breillat was indeed a beautiful young woman. In the eighties, she became famous in France for playing the role of "Claudine" in the French TV series inspired by the novels by Colette.

And she is also in Fanny & Alexander!

One brilliant scene, that would be a borderline masterpiece if it were a standalone short (the first seduction scene, of course), mixed in with over an hour of worthless tedium and a shock ending to try and make us forget just how dull almost everything before it was.

Rent this for the seduction scene, the amusing-but-idiotic finale ("Does fatty get raped?" asked one of my female housemates after the sister and mother were murdered), and Breillat's unbelievably conceited interviews.

What strikes me is how we can spend so much time with two characters and yet never for a moment buy a single word that comes out their mouths, understand any of their actions, nor feel any sense of loss, sympathy or even vague interest when they are murdered and raped at the end.

Save your money, guys and girls. Honestly, don't buy it.

Narshty wrote:What strikes me is how we can spend so much time with two characters and yet never for a moment buy a single word that comes out their mouths, understand any of their actions, nor feel any sense of loss, sympathy or even vague interest when they are murdered and raped at the end.

Have you every thought maybe you're just a very cold person..?

nor feel any sense of loss, sympathy

That would be in a Hollywood film, where the director would try very hard to make you feel for the characters. Breillat isn't playing in the same field.

CSM126 wrote:

willycaslon wrote:anyone who knows french know what a literal interpretation of the title is?

"To My Sister"

Actually, "To My Sister!" The exclamation mark, as with "Parfait Amour!/Perfect Love!", says it all.

Well gents, if you spent less time making snarky insinuations about my apparent viewing habits and temperament and presented some sort of reasonable argument, I'd be most gratified.

Arn777 wrote:

nor feel any sense of loss, sympathy

That would be in a Hollywood film, where the director would try very hard to make you feel for the characters.

So empathy for the characters is a trait exclusive to Hollywood films? Come on now...

Arn777 wrote:Breillat isn't playing in the same field.

I don't think Breillat even knows what sort of game she's playing. In the interviews she only presents the most wishy-washy, inane and self-important justifications for her work. There isn't even the vaguest sense she knows what she's doing.

As I said before, the seduction scene on its own would be a tour-de-force of short filmmaking, presenting a fairly anonymous young cad worming his way into the knickers of a very nervous young girl. It's when Breillat tries to replace these basic archetypes and construct actual characters that it falls flat - which, unfortunately, is about 75% of the rest of the film. The word "precise" on the back of the case is about as inappropriate an adjective as could be used to describe this film. It's hopelessly fuzzy in its aims (and I don't believe for a moment it's to "let the audience make up their own mind").

Anais is given such absurdly precocious dialogue (which she almost pulls off with her impressively nonchalant delivery) - "You reek of loose morals." "I was born too late; I'll never know the people I'd like to." - it just stinks of Breillat using the character as her own mouthpiece to share nuggets of dubious "wisdom". Instead, she has succeeded (if such a word can be used) in creating an extraordinary anomaly: a characterless character study.

Breillat's work is almost entirely preoccupied with challenging mainstream cinema's (her chosen medium) view of sexuality by interjecting that of the female perspective on sex. Arguably, much needed and an honourable approach, but for me she has done this over so much of her output that the original concept has become somewhat blurred. Fat girl is for me just plain flat and self indulgent and dare I say bordering on obsession.

I agree with Narshty (on Fat Girl) that this is a somewhat characterless character study.
I have seen one off pieces of sculpture and sound installations which convey that precise concept but in a form which allows the spectator to decipher its ultimate message, something I feel Breillat has lost sight of...

For me she has become the master of content with sadly a somewhat distorted view of form.

Narshty wrote:Well gents, if you spent less time making snarky insinuations about my apparent viewing habits and temperament and presented some sort of reasonable argument, I'd be most gratified.

I was making a funny joke.

How many actual kids, though, are fully formed characters at that age? Both leads were awkward, dazed and confused just like about everyone I knew at that age. Easily seduced by an older bullshitist, prone to melodramatic fits, petty jealousies and constantly making crude, gangly forays into the adult world. I was charmed by Fatty's... I'm going to dip into cliché here... inner beauty, Jailbait's outer beauty and the vulnerability of the both them. Throughout I found little truths and situations I could relate to even though I've never been, and never will be, a teenage girl. The pretty girl and the Italian, for example, getting it on in the girls' bedroom shows a girl unwilling to break small boundaries such as sneaking out of her house--let alone her room--while skipping right ahead to snap the boundary of boundaries: boinking. At the same time afflicting the fat girl with a larger than life example of the humiliations and indignities all young ones encounter. Great performances (I'll say --for child actors, if I must) and excellent insight. And I loved giving that kind of ending to a coming-of-age film. Not only is it an effective twist but it illustrates--in literal terms--exactly what Breillat was talking about in the interview, putting one's sibling aside to find one's own way.

Breillat didn't come off as vague or conceited at all and I really can't see how that impression was made. Maybe when she was talking about how the pretty sister ended up one-dimensional? But from my experiences many attractive people end up pretty vain--I should know, believe me--so I don't think she was wrong-headed there either. For a woman director... I think she's pretty sharp... For a woman director.

I was also making a funny joke, I should have added after Hollywood. It was prompted by (a) the fact that you disliked the film partly because you did not feel any empathy for the characters and mostly your (b) your ‘don’t buy it’ recommendation. Maybe you didn’t like it, but that doesn’t mean that other people will feel the same. ‘Sex is comedy’ did nothing for me, but I really liked Fat Girl.

I have seen 4 of her films and I am not sure if she really cares if the audience feels any empathy towards the characters and I really don't mind it, in fact that what makes her film more powerful.

As for both yours and Subbuteo’s consideration that this a characterless character study, I would disagree strongly regarding Anais and both girls relationship with their parents (in particular the fucked-up mom). All pretty strong characters IMO. And there are stronger scenes than the seduction one, the one of Anais in the swimming pool and of course the very long and beautifully harsh sex scene.

I don't look at this film as harshly as Narshty, but after seeing it I wondered what the big deal about Breillat was. I didn't detect that Breillat actually liked the characters very much...and the whole thing was about THIS close to being exploitative of the children in the film. Actually, I found the sex scene to be almost tedious and the ending to be somewhat to be shocking just for the sake of it.

Notwithstanding all that, I did like the Anais character and her view of the world...I think she does a command performance in spite of what Breillat makes her go through.

All in all a mixed bag. I'm still willing to have an open mind regarding what Breillat is attempting through her films, but it's certainly not on the strenght of this one.

John

The ending struck me as for-the-sake-of-it too at first but then I found there was a bit more to it on some reflection. Two things I especially liked about the finale were that it was an effective update of the ol' Hitchcock idea of introducing horror to a mundane setting/genre and, second, it also works as a dark, French-humour-style, visual metaphor the way the guy penetrates the car.

I liked this film immensely, and somewhat perversely. I agree with John that Breillat does not care for her characters, and doesn't necessarily want us to care for them much either. They act in strange, contradictory, but human ways. For example, the mother makes sure her daughters clean up after themselves in the restaurant, agreeing with her beautiful daughter that "the French are pigs", adding "we already have so much to be ashamed of", and then tosses her water bottle out the window as they peel out of the parking lot! The tension in that last sequence was very well manipulated, I thought: Mom's bad driving at night, the transport trailers closing in on them, etc. I can't agree with Narshty's assessment of Breillat, I think she's brilliant, and don't understand where the vague or ambiguous statements might have been made. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to her discuss her worl I do think, however, that she's a bit of a nutbar, and lacks self-effacement. I loved how she described how one had to change gears with actors, spur them on with roaring one minute, and calm them with soft tones the next; but then, she declares she would be manipulative if she knew 'exactly' how to do this!

Staged, stylized, but also realistic (I loved Anais's 'romancing' of the diving board and the pool ladder posts: back and forth between her two loves, imitating adults, etc) at times, I think Breillat is trying to walk a very fine line between masque and realism. Having never seen any of her other films, I'm not sure if this one succeeds where others fail, or vice versa, but I did find this a powerful film, even if the characters were 'forced' into their roles more than they were coaxed into them.

(Our society) is founded in the backwash of hypocrisy. .. in a society of guilt. By looking at it I'd like the guilt to disappear. When it is no longer sin, I believe we will be freer with ourselves and more loving to others because we'll love ourselves more.

Interview with Catherine Breillat on the Anatomy of Hell disc

Having just seen Anatomy of Hell I've had a kind of epiphany with regard to my thinking about Breillat. I've been a bit unsure about how to take a lot of her films, and though I'll explain how I've decided that she is an interesting director, I can completely understand the ambivelence that a lot of people have about her and I don't think Anatomy of Hell will go towards changing many people's ideas. I had been looking at Breillat's films as 'a characterless character study' as stated above, but character is not what Breillat is interested in. They are cyphers, facilitating the plot as I said in my previous post. I am not sure however that Breillat has no idea of what she is wanting to say (she does herself no favours in the Fat Girl interviews, but in the Anatomy of Hell interview she is able to go deeper into her ideas and is much less harsh, making it definitely worth a watch). I am starting to see that her work is exploring and developing ideas as she goes along and for that reason I wouldn't be willing to dismiss her body of work at this stage.

The reason for my greater willingness to appreciate her work is that in Anatomy of Hell I am seeing themes that had been there in a lot of her work, including Fat Girl, which I had not picked up on before. Also I read this Senses of Cinema article about Romance which says:

A scene in Romance that does indeed offer a "graphic display of female genitalia" in unflinching close-up is the climactic scene devoted to childbirth. This scene, naturally, does not rate a mention in the OFLC's list of pertinent moments in the film requiring comment, justification or adjudication. But why not? And what is so natural about this exclusion? The classifiers must have considered the scene (if they consciously considered it at all) as a 'clinical' depiction of a normal - and inoffensive because 'non-sexual' - bodily function. Yet it is precisely the system of these differentiations and distinctions - between the sexual and the non-sexual realms, between what is banally physical and arousingly physical, between an 'innocent' or clinical gaze and an eroticised or perverse one - which Breillat's film puts so thoroughly and vertiginously in question.

The film's 'hardcore' fantasy scene is the centre of this exploration. Like Ruiz's set-piece, it stages a dissociation or a contradiction directly inside the image. Triggered by the experience of a line of medical students spreading her legs and then looking and feeling inside her body, Marie imagines a brothel for pregnant women. Here, the upper half of her body (and the bodies of other pregnant women) is in one, clinical space, with presiding doctors and men holding their partners' hands. But it is also, in a spooky architectural plan, a circular space; and on the other side of the wall, the lower halves of these prone female bodies are being 'serviced' by a hot and sweaty band of masturbating studs lining up to insert their members in the 'anonymous' vaginas presented to them. As an intense, truly 'transgressive' picturing of a psychic fantasy, the scene plays out all the confusions - I mean both the discrepancies and the similarities - between 'anonymous', casual, 'lawless' encounters and 'intimate', socially sanctioned unions, a site of confusion which the film traces and probes in every scene (supremely via the figure of the school principal whose bondage rituals lead to an unexpectedly tender, light and formal relationship of care and trust between himself and Marie).

The 'split' marked by the wall between two starkly contrasted realms of social and psychical reality - between two images of what is conceivable and imaginable as constitutive of reality and experience - is mirrored by the violently visible join between two orders of representation. On one side, the fictional, the naturalistic, the staged and acted; on the other side, the pornographic, with its faceless 'body doubles' engaged in real, live sex acts. But where exactly is the obscenity, the freak-out here - in the action on the outer rim of this imaginary circle, or in the split, the distinction, the abstract 'X' which itself forces such a hallucinatory dissociation?

This distinction occurs again in Anatomy of Hell in the sequence where Amira Casar talks about inserting a tampon, how it is similar to a penis, but is sterile and functional, as far from sexual connotations as it can get. "I can push it in like that. To the tip. Without feeling anything, no sensation of pleasure at all. A very ordinary gesture. Look, there's a whole device to make it look complex. So one can insert it, without touching oneself, keeping your virginity intact."

In these sequences, the two films are trying to show the audience the artificial nature of sex imposed by the rules of society that through sanitising genitalia makes them seem dirty, not to be talked about. Condoms and tampons are important functional devices, Breillat is not suggesting that they are not important, but she is looking at them from the point of view of making the implicit values ascribed to them by society explicit.

This is the clinical, genitalia as functional organs view. Fat Girl shows the other societal allowance, that of socially acceptable sex between the 'prettier' girl, with defined limits of for example anal sex 'keeping virginity intact' before the final vaginal penetration (I kept thinking of that rather crude baseball term of getting to second or third base while watching - well defined limits which the boy knows that he has to push up against a little further each time, a societal ritual in which both the boy and girl know their part, the girl submits slowly, too fast and she might be seen to be slutty, too slow and she loses him). What Breillat is trying to show in Fat Girl is how sex itself is not obscene, sexual organs are not obscene. It is the value that society places on them that is obscene (One very funny example of societal values and obscenity comes up in the cover image of Tartan's release of Anatomy of Hell, in which Amira Casar is shown wearing a slip, when in the film she is completely naked! Perhaps Tartan did not realise how funny that would be considering the theme of the film!) These values are mostly disseminated through the culture, so in this sense Breillat's films are playing a dangerous game, similar to Pasolini's Salo, of exploring how far they are playing a part in representations of sexuality (are they another packaging of sex to sell a film, or are they beyond that because they reject the societal and cultural notions of certain barriers in portraying sex?).

Anais in Fat Girl shows her detachment from society (already present in her lacking in societal definitions of 'beauty') by refusing to want to loose her virginity in the 'classical' way, as exemplified by her sister. The deep, emotional way in which Anais reacts to her rape, and in the scene in the swimming pool, is well contrasted with the real and acceptable but shallow and manipulative sex in the bedroom.

In that sense the rape is the 'punishment' of Anais by society (as much as the mothers death is society's punishment for her lack of care for her children, and the prettier sister is killed because she has 'gone too far too soon', or for her naivete in society's eyes) - but because Anais rejects its power over her she wins out, and through her initiation moves beyond the need for protection by societal forces (the police, the parents, the boyfriend, the bigger sister). She is on her own now but equipped to deal with society with unclouded eyes.

In that sense the rape is only considered obscene because society has declared it so, while the sweet talk is just as insistent and has the same result for the prettier sister. That I think prompts Anais's hostile reaction to the police - they have run to her aid, the way that they did not do to her sister.

I don't exactly condone this as a realistic view, but I think if you see the film not as documentary realism, or the way films normally present 'real' events (as I think Narshty might have when he speaks of the seduction as the only good scene in the film), but as an abstraction in which events are literal to the characters but meant to be taken metaphorically by the audience (similar to Salo), then it is an interesting exploration.

Just watched this again tonight. What struck me was Breillat's complete inability to use music effectively. At times the soundtrack not only took me out of the film, but almost made me laugh. In my opinion this film stands above her others solely because of the performances of the three main young actors.
Breillat is an interesting director if only for her willingness to push the sexual envelope. I seriously doubt anyone would let her make as many films as she has if there wasn't the usual sexual controversy involved.

I just watched this right now... As far as the ending, I felt it was a little bit in left fiend and kept wondering if it would just be a dream... Then it wasn't. I also considered that maybe it had some sort of parallel significance with what had happened before (like, in a sense the girl was metaphorically killed by what the young man had done to her.... maybe her mother too - albeit less violently (I guess it depends on whether or not you think being killed with an axe or strangled is more violent))

Just watched the interview with the director on the dvd. What a bitch. All her blathering about not wanting to discuss the sex scenes witht he actors, and how she doesn't believe in them protecting their character or image, and how she liked working with the young teenage actors because they didn't question her or ask for the fulls cript ahead of time. The mroe I read/see about her, the more I get the sneaking suspicion that she's just some bloated pervert who has no respect for the craft of acting or the emotional toll her type of roles take on the actor. Not to mention that film after film seems to rely more and more on the shock value of sex and some loose metaphorical philosophical noodlings than on anything else.

Morbii wrote:I just watched this right now... As far as the ending, I felt it was a little bit in left fiend and kept wondering if it would just be a dream... Then it wasn't. I also considered that maybe it had some sort of parallel significance with what had happened before (like, in a sense the girl was metaphorically killed by what the young man had done to her.... maybe her mother too - albeit less violently (I guess it depends on whether or not you think being killed with an axe or strangled is more violent))

I think there was also the idea of 'be careful what you wish for' because what happened to Anais is just how she described her perfect 'first time' i.e. a stranger who she doesn't know and will enver see again. I also think the end had a nice sort 'f you' to the snobbish upper class that the film deals with. Here they are, on vacation in the south of France, dealing with a minor life drama in their young hot daughter getting screwed by a smooth 19 year old douchebag. But really what in the hell does that truly matter in a world where stuff as horrible as the ending takes place?

I don't know if I can say that I 'like' this film but since I enjoy loaning it to friends and then discussing it afterwards, I suppose I could say that I find it to be an interesting film. It is a take on 'be careful what you wish for' if one sees the ending in a literal sense. If taken as a sort of ghoulish fantasy, which I subscribe to, the ending is more of a liberating experience for Anais. What young, smart, awkward adolescent hasn't fantasized about the death of a loved one in a sort of revenge scenario for the lack of love/attention/etc. not received? All in all, I find Fat Girl to be an interesting exploration of young female sexuality and, more importantly, the relationship between female siblings and the effects that hurts, both seen and unseen, can have on a fragile, developing individual. I'll have to see more of Breillat's work to form a stronger opinion, methinks.

I always understood the title "A ma soeur!" : "To my sister!", like : drink to my sister ! fuck to my sister ! Just like this : when you are drinking with someone you can say something like "drink to me, drink to my health" while holding your glass of vine (or champagne, would be in "Fat Girl") (like in McCartney's song "Picasso's Last Words"; which started during a drinking night with Dustin Hoffman and Paul McCartney).
Of course, if this title is understood like I did, there's something cynical in it.
But, I've never seen the ending sequence like a vengeance from the fat girl, being a fantasmoid/dreamed vengeance sequence or a real one.
First, because a) the ending with the truck, really happened in France during the '80's... The guy was a serial-rapist. (I don't own this edition, consequently, I don't know if Catherine Breillat refers to this fait-divers in the audio commentary or not...)
b) this do not seem to be a vengeance dreaming sequence because her sister, and her mother aren't raped, I mean in a physical sense; of course the strangulation as a strong sexual meaning.
c) It's hard to say this, but the end of the film, when the 'fat girl' is about to be raped, well, it was like her 'first time'. She 'acted' if it was the first time she made love. In the middle of the movie, her young sister got her first time. Her aggressor also seem surprised, almost shocked. He doesn't know what to do. Perhaps that's probably why she isn't killed in the end.
Sure, calling a rape a 'first time' is horrible, but it was her fist time, how horrible it was, and the whole scene is really striking; you are not feeling comfortable after a movie like this.

But we can't talk about a totally realistic movie : the end scene, although the fait-divers really happened in France, is probably a king of dream-fanstasma sequence. Because we meet a family, especially the Mother's job, which is totally disconnected from the social-reality. I don't really like this, it's even not a bourgeoisie class description. As if the time was completely suspended. But, that serves the purpose of the film : time suspended, like this fat girl who will always perhaps stay like this, holidays after holidays, no puberty end, whereas on the other side, her young sister lolita-like is getting more beautiful each summer.

I'm not so sure about Catherine Breillat never looked like the 'fat girl' in the reality. But there's a real and intriguing reminiscence between Catherine Breillat's visage and the one of the 'fat girl' character.
Did Catherine Breillat really play in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander ??????

I like the cover of the Criterion edition : fingers like scissors, it reminds me what Travis Bickle did in the porn theatre in Taxi Driver, or earlier, what did Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets.
I'm quite of sure that there is a Taxi Driver influence in this particular scene of 'fat girl' when she hide her eyes/face with her fingers like scissors.

Sorry if my English is so-so... I hope that my words speak my minds...

Was anyone aware that Breillat had a stroke last year? I just read this in Film Comment. Apparently it hasn't stopped her since she's got a new film shot.

Here's the full notice, retyped for your pleasure:

"Despite suffering a stroke last year, scandal queen Catherine Breillat already has a new film in the can. Une vielle maîtresse stars the inevitable Asia Argento as a courtesan at the center of a pileup of amorous intrigue à la Dangerous Liaisons. The film features appearances by previous Breillat alumni Anne Parillaud, Lio, and Amira Casar, but no Rocco Siffredi this time, kids."

Yes, I saw her being interviewed on a supplement for a recent French dvd, and she wasn't looking too good.

Pretty much.