Fat Girl (A Ma Soeur!)

From controversial French director Catherine Breillat, comes this English subtitled film about two sisters from opposite ends for the body spectrum. There's the awkward chubby Anais who is always watching everyone and then there is the modelesque Elena who flirts excessively with older men. The young teens live outside of Paris and are vacationing with their parents when they meet a young Law student from Rome at an outdoor cafe. Elena tries to play the adult by ordering coffee and Anais orders a banana split.

These two sisters have a highly emotional relationship that can turn verbally volatile on a dime. Elena spends a lot of her waking hours belittling Anais in front of others with comments like, "It's simple, she eats like a pig. It's all she does." Their father agrees and their mother shrugs it off as being hormonal. It is easy to love one and hate the other but then these sudden moments of sublime closeness, like when Elena begins feeding Anais in an attempt to help appease when she finds her crying over her breakfast, make you rethink your conclusions.

There are two very long scenes within this film. The longest is when Fernando sneaks into the girls' room to lie in bed with Elena in an attempt to coax her into sex. Anais listens to them talk about sex and watches them fool around. The whole bedroom scene is very long and we only see glimpses of Anais making me think the film should really have been called Fat Girl's Sister. The second long scene occurs after the secret relationship is discovered by the girls parents. Mother is designated the driver on the boring long trip back to the city. Their mother is not a good driver so they find opportunities to stop along the way: a clothing shop, park...

I have conflicting emotions about this film because of the sexual content (there's just something disturbing to me about adults watching teens have sex even if it is supposed to be artistic). But the cinematography in Fat Girl is full of lovely colours and wide angle shots of Anais watching and the music is fabulous.

Overall, Fat Girl is a strange film which focuses on the love-hate relationship that can occur with some sisters. This is a film about desire, acceptance, love, hate, change, sex and violence. It has a horrific ending I was not expecting (that doesn't happen very often) but still it left me with a sick feeling. Don't watch Fat Girl expecting to find some fat-positive inspirational movie. It is not. It is dramatic, artistic and definitely crosses the boundaries of comfort with its sexuality and violence.

Genre: Drama

Directed by: Catherine Breillat

Actors:

• Ana Reboux as Anais
• Roxane Mesquida as Elena
• Libero De Rienzo as Fernado