Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Sex-obsessed director, Catherine Breillat has only gone and done another film about sex! Well, actually Fat Girl is over a decade old now so she's done a few more sex-related films which I'm yet to see. In fact, Fat Girl is my very first taste of Catherine Breillat and I'll definitely be tucking in for more if they're all as tasty as this one. For those who don't know, Fat Girl tells the story of a chubby 12 year-old gal and her sexy fifteen year-old sister who may as well be called Lolita.The film is pretty short and simplistic but it definitely leaves a lasting impression. I suspect that most people would find it boring because the scenes are extremely long and drawn out. The longest bit must be the extended foreplay scene in which Lolita and her fancy man are on the verge of doing the dirty deed. Not one moment of the film bored me though. I found myself sucked into its atmosphere of stark realism and drawn to the engaging characters.I was also really impressed with the young actors. Anaïs Reboux who plays the fat girl in question was particularly enthralling. It's important to bear in mind that she was only twelve years-old at the time of filming and it's a fairly challenging role to play which deals with adolescence, sexuality and sibling rivalry. There's a lovely tender moment between the two siblings where they lay on the bed and joke together. It feels very genuine and just goes to show how brilliant the two actresses are and how realised their characters are.The film builds up to an awkward car journey which ends in a genuinely unexpected and shocking way. Many people have condemned the ending for being shocking for the sake of it; however I don't think that's true. If you pay attention to the first 70 minutes you'll spot a lot of foreshadowing and find that it actually has a lot of meaning which is important to the overall story. I think it's just the sudden change in tone which people find jarring and off-putting. I'm all for unpredictability though.Quite a lot of people also complain that the film is basically child pornography masquerading as art. The BBFC even cut the DVD release of the film "relating to potential harm, to address the specific danger that video enables the scene to be used to stimulate and validate abusive action." I'd disagree. The scene in question isn't gratuitous (I watched the uncut Australian version) and in my unprofessional opinion isn't harmful or erotic to the rational human mind. It's also very important to the themes of the story.Prudes should also note that the sexy sister was actually eighteen years-old at the time of filming and that the erect penis is actually prosthetic! It is a graphic film, but it is also a film all about sex and sex does tend be to be graphic. I'm not sure why people get so disgusted about graphic sex scenes in films. We all have sex in real life so why is watching it on a screen so repulsive? Anywho, Fat Girl is not a porn film. It is an interesting story about sexual awakening. It's beautifully acted and directed, and also has a wonderfully immersive atmosphere. I'd particularly recommend it to fans of the new French extremity and European art films.

Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux in her only acting role as of 2013) is the titular character in Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl ("À ma soeur!" being its original French title). A chubby twelve year old girl, who finds herself constantly browbeaten by her fifteen year old sister, Elena (Roxane Mesquida) while they are vacationing with their parents off the coast of France. Elena, unlike her sister, is thin, incredibly gorgeous, and possesses a beautiful body. A topic of discussion between the two young girls as they listlessly walk around the resort is their virginity and their relationships. Elena, while sexually promiscuous, holds the belief that your virginity should be taken by someone you love. Her younger sister, however, believes that you should your first time should happen just to happen and you should just get it over with.While walking, they meet a law student named Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), who immediately finds himself attracted to Elena. Not long after meeting him does Elena invite Fernando up to her room to talk. Fernando believes like Elena does - that sex should be something sacred and special - but he winds up convincing her to partake in anal sex instead, as vaginal sex is something that judges whether or not you still have your virginity.While it is questionable that Fernando actually believes what he is saying, we can see Elena's hesitation during the foreplay and the sex. We are well aware of her beliefs at this point in time, however, we can see that she has a common curiosity about sex so much so that she simply wants to see just how the act is performed and executed.This scene is one lengthy, naturalistic shot Breillat conducts in the room shared by Elena and Anaïs, boldly establishing real-time, mood, and discomfort just by the way the shot is framed, how long it lasts, and how the characters are placed inside the shot. Fernando and Elena are spooning, with Elena's nightgown on and her vagina and pubic hair clearly visible to the audience. Fernando continues to rub her stomach in a way that doesn't change Elena's blank, frustrated, and confused expression. She knows what she's doing is wrong but is overcome by understandable adolescent curiosity. Anaïs is laying in bed several feet away, closing her eyes and pretending her sister's innocence isn't being taken away in front of her.Fat Girl works well because it illustrates the sexual tendencies of the female and a believable sibling rivalry that is captured with surprising purity and tenderness. When Anaïs and Elena fight, it's nothing but believable. When the two talk quietly in bed it is also believable, almost as if they are real-life sisters. This is because Reboux and Mesquida are not only great screen presences but evoke relatable chemistry as young girls. This chemistry is what the entire film rests on, due to the fact that parents' roles are predicated off of disinterest and ignorance, leaving the girls to utilize each other for companionship and advice.It's a tough subject and Breillat doesn't sugarcoat it. Either she lived a grim reality similar to her characters or she has seen friends go through circumstances akin to Anaïs's and Elena's. Or perhaps she has her head inside a teenage girls' head. Perhaps she just has a deep resonance and an awareness to the sexual maturity of adolescent girls. If that's the case, it would be tough to communicate such a resonance, but Breillat finds ways to do so in Fat Girl that make the film an unsettling and often very consuming piece of work.Much has been made about the ending that is admittedly out of nowhere, able to shock the most hardened viewer raw because of its jolting nature, and implied to add ambiguity and an additional layer to the story. After several hours, where it has crossed my mind about every five minutes, I have not made up my mind on it. An amendment to the review will be made if I do. Perhaps it's a rare moment when an instance in a very great film happens that I'll never be able to define. Did I like it? Did I loathe it? Is it out of place? Does it derail the story? No matter the answer to the question, the previous seventy-nine minutes were still disturbing and well worth seeing.Starring: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, and Arsinée Khanjian. Directed by: Catherine Breillat.

This is one of the movies I could easily rate as one of the most hateful movies of all time. I saw it some time ago on TV, as the last thing on that day, so, luckily, it couldn't spoil much of the rest of my day.But I imagine myself what would have been had I seen this on big screen, having paid for it. I think I would have asked myself: "Did I really need to see this ?" Worst thing is it doesn't get that bad, to make you walk out on it, until the last few minutes, but, when it gets bad, it gets obnoxious.I wonder what made the director want to do this movie, then, I remembered that this species of film directors exist for quite some time, who want to stir controversy at all costs, and who live on the hype, and not on the money their movies make.Having said all that I think that this movie could have been saved at least partially, if that last sequence of events had been set only in the imagination of the young girl. All the movie is about the build-up of hate from the main character towards her sister (and her mom, for her indifference), so I could have understood it. But then the director said: "Well, let's make it real. Just for shock's sake. I bet every film critic will have something to say about this."1* (because 0 is not an option on IMDb, unfortunately).

Fat Girl is a very different kind of movie. Anais is the "fat girl" of the movie and she loves to eat. She watches her beautiful sister Elena get involved with and get seduced by a suitor. All Anais wants is to lose her virginity too. When she makes out with an imaginary boyfriend in the swimming pool, it is heart-breaking. The actors are all stunning all around. The ending, like the synopsis said, is shocking and controversial. I think it is fitting because real life is never predicted. All the events and reasonings we are all lead up to are believable because Anais never hides who she is and what she wants. Fat Girl is a movie that was never seen by the masses but lucky it is now available on DVD. I would never want to watch it more than once, but I recommend everybody to see it at least once.