TN_Vixen
Rear Window
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2000
- Posts
- 7,710
requesting advice- I'm heading out in a little bit but haven't yet decided between these films. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd appreciate it.
The Royal Tennenbaums
Resident Evil
40 Days 40 Nights
Lord of the Rings
Id really like to go see this movie: (but my friend would never sit through subtitles)
'Fat Girl': complex and genuine
By Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post
March 15, 2002
"Fat Girl," the latest film from French writer-director Catherine Breillat ("Romance"), is the kind of stunning and contentious work of art that will leave a lot of folks speechless - some because of the movie's graphic, near porn-caliber treatment of its subject matter (statutory rape), and some simply because it is one of the most artful, complex and honest depictions of adolescent sexual awakening and sibling rivalry ever committed to celluloid. Whether in anger or in awe, or some combination thereof, it will knock you for a loop.
Outside the adult video market, American audiences are just not used to seeing the kind of things that Breillat so matter-of-factly puts on screen (fully aroused male nudity, for one thing). And that's not even what's most shocking about this audacious and difficult work. The story of two mismatched sisters, 15-year-old heartbreaker Elena and 12-year-old wallflower Anais (the "fat girl" of the title), Breillat's film ends with such a disturbing, out-of-left-field finale that, for sheer, jaw-dropping psychological horror, it makes everything that came before it seem tame.
While sitting in a sidewalk cafe one summer vacation, sisters Elena (doe-eyed Roxane Mesquida) and Anais (doughy Anais Reboux) encounter Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), a handsome Italian law student. Before Anais has even finished her banana split, Fernando and Elena, a sexual naif in every sense except the recognition of her beauty's power over men, are engaged in a passionate embrace. Within a day or two, the roguish young man has snuck into the bedroom Elena shares with Anais for a couple of late-night trysts with his underage lover, which quickly accelerate from foreplay to full deflowering, a rite of passage Elena is all too eager to get over with, and one slowed only by a series of awkward verbal negotiations.
Through it all, Anais lies awake one bed over, sometimes in tears. True to the nature of the sisters' uneasy relationship, which lurches between tenderness and outright cruelty, Anais feels her sister is making the wrong decision - giving herself to someone whose professions of love are all too transparent to anyone eavesdropping - but Anais' criticism of her sister's loss of virginity may not be for the reasons you would expect.
When the girls' mother (Arsinee Khanjian) finds out about Fernando, though, the party's really over, and the family, sans Dad, who has already returned to the city, climbs into the car for one very uncomfortable ride home.
What happens next will be topic A in every post-film discussion. Breillat's story suddenly becomes a road movie with a creepy sense of foreboding. Yet when it takes its final, jarring detour, "Fat Girl" may leave you wondering whether the coda is some form of literal poetic justice, a wish-fulfilling dream sequence, or something done for shock value.
Despite the clear, unflinching script and breathtaking acting throughout, there is a veil shrouding the face of teen and preteen sexuality that this movie depicts. But does the opacity mask profundity or Breillat's failure to come to terms with her subject?
Penetrating art or pretentious artiness, how many movies about pubescent girls on holiday are, after all, capable of giving you nightmares?
In French and Italian with subtitles. Unrated; contains graphic sexuality and brutality. Now showing at Downtown West.
The Royal Tennenbaums
Resident Evil
40 Days 40 Nights
Lord of the Rings
Id really like to go see this movie: (but my friend would never sit through subtitles)
'Fat Girl': complex and genuine
By Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post
March 15, 2002
"Fat Girl," the latest film from French writer-director Catherine Breillat ("Romance"), is the kind of stunning and contentious work of art that will leave a lot of folks speechless - some because of the movie's graphic, near porn-caliber treatment of its subject matter (statutory rape), and some simply because it is one of the most artful, complex and honest depictions of adolescent sexual awakening and sibling rivalry ever committed to celluloid. Whether in anger or in awe, or some combination thereof, it will knock you for a loop.
Outside the adult video market, American audiences are just not used to seeing the kind of things that Breillat so matter-of-factly puts on screen (fully aroused male nudity, for one thing). And that's not even what's most shocking about this audacious and difficult work. The story of two mismatched sisters, 15-year-old heartbreaker Elena and 12-year-old wallflower Anais (the "fat girl" of the title), Breillat's film ends with such a disturbing, out-of-left-field finale that, for sheer, jaw-dropping psychological horror, it makes everything that came before it seem tame.
While sitting in a sidewalk cafe one summer vacation, sisters Elena (doe-eyed Roxane Mesquida) and Anais (doughy Anais Reboux) encounter Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), a handsome Italian law student. Before Anais has even finished her banana split, Fernando and Elena, a sexual naif in every sense except the recognition of her beauty's power over men, are engaged in a passionate embrace. Within a day or two, the roguish young man has snuck into the bedroom Elena shares with Anais for a couple of late-night trysts with his underage lover, which quickly accelerate from foreplay to full deflowering, a rite of passage Elena is all too eager to get over with, and one slowed only by a series of awkward verbal negotiations.
Through it all, Anais lies awake one bed over, sometimes in tears. True to the nature of the sisters' uneasy relationship, which lurches between tenderness and outright cruelty, Anais feels her sister is making the wrong decision - giving herself to someone whose professions of love are all too transparent to anyone eavesdropping - but Anais' criticism of her sister's loss of virginity may not be for the reasons you would expect.
When the girls' mother (Arsinee Khanjian) finds out about Fernando, though, the party's really over, and the family, sans Dad, who has already returned to the city, climbs into the car for one very uncomfortable ride home.
What happens next will be topic A in every post-film discussion. Breillat's story suddenly becomes a road movie with a creepy sense of foreboding. Yet when it takes its final, jarring detour, "Fat Girl" may leave you wondering whether the coda is some form of literal poetic justice, a wish-fulfilling dream sequence, or something done for shock value.
Despite the clear, unflinching script and breathtaking acting throughout, there is a veil shrouding the face of teen and preteen sexuality that this movie depicts. But does the opacity mask profundity or Breillat's failure to come to terms with her subject?
Penetrating art or pretentious artiness, how many movies about pubescent girls on holiday are, after all, capable of giving you nightmares?
In French and Italian with subtitles. Unrated; contains graphic sexuality and brutality. Now showing at Downtown West.
