I like her films a lot. They are, by and large, extremely challenging and disturbing. And Fat Girl is indeed horrific, perhaps more so than any of her other films. But if Breillat keeps making them, I’ll keep watching.
HERBERT, I like the way you put it. And I agree.
Watching it a few years ago, my first interpretation was that the fat girl, who clearly wasn’t as desirable as her beautiful, petite sister was, lived her life vicariously through her sister’s sexual escapades and adventures. She despised her but would’ve given anything to be in her place. When the rapist attacked the family wagon, killed the sister and began to rape the fat girl, she sort of felt like she wasn’t completely undesirable. She realized that there were men in this world – like the rapist – who would find her more desirable than her prettier sibling, so much that he would even even murder the other in order to get to her. She gives in to him.
I agree with you Nikhil. That was my first interpretation of the ending as well. I believe that Anaïs said that she wasn’t raped because for the first time in her life she felt desired (even though that is dysfunctional thinking and rape is an act of power and not about sex). Throughout the whole film, we watch Anaïs watch Elena be seduced over and over again by this young boy. Anaïs can clearly see what the boy’s true motives are.. that he only views her sister as a sexual conquest and he desires to be with her physically (and does not care about her emotionally). It is all about the desire to him, and Anaïs yearns to be desired by a man in the same way. So even though the man who raped her didn’t really desire her physically, that is how Anaïs felt and that’s why she wasn’t upset by the rape and told them that she wasn’t raped..
As a woman who has experienced only the physical desire by men before, I was greatly moved by this film. It reminded me of the intense physical desire that a man can feel for a woman that can truly be nothing more than a physical desire. And that even though this desire is meaningless to the man, it can make a woman feel valued and beautiful as it did for Anaïs.
Fat Girl, to me, is about the horrors of growing up female. In Breillat’s films being a woman (adult) is a double edged sword: consider the heroine of Romance. She is abused and abused and abused by men until she decides to get back at them. It’s sort of a “rape revenge” movie. But for a young girl, the options are more limited. In Fat Girl we have a horrifying family dynamic where one daughter has become the Absolute Pretty, and the other has become the Absolute Plain. They have done this to themselves so there will be room in the family for both of them. It’s a sick situation. But the plain girl is much wiser in her pain than the pretty one. She understands that sex is not love, whereas the pretty girl does not understand this. She confuses the two. So of course she falls in love with a boy who only wants sex from her. And he hurts her: he fucks her in the ass with no lubrication and she screams while her plain sister is in the bed across the room. That’s a more horrible scene than the ending, n’est-ce pas? So anyway, the only thing the mother can do is go shopping; that’s all she understands. So when the shit hits the fan with the stolen ring, she is incapable of dealing with it emotionally and acts as if her daughter did something terrible. No solidarity between the women in this family. Which means they are already doomed. The father cuts out as he always does. The mother goes on this hysteria-fueled road trip, during which David Bowie tells us that the pretty things are about to go to hell (i.e., the mother and the pretty daughter), and there’s also a scene at a rest stop where the mother is moved by the piggish and crass materialism to remark that the French are “an awful people.” But this revelation of her own bourgeois evil comes too late to save her, and anyway it’s something that the fat girl already knows. The rapist, who is a bit of deus ex machina I grant, is of course attracted to the fat girl; she seems more alive to him than the other two, more desirable. He’s the first person outside of the stifling bourgeouis world of the film, and he’s also the first guy who prefers Anais. That tells you something. She is better off without her family in the end, free to discover a world full of people who are less uptight and less judgmental. She’s lost her virginity and gotten that over with, which was her plan in scene one, where she tells her sister that one should lose one’s virginity to someone you don’t care about because the sex will be a horrible experience anyway. So much for romanticism. It’s a beautiful film.
I really liked Fat Girl up to the last scene. These were wonderful, complex characters that kept my attention throughout the film. The relationships between the family members were fantastic in the most dysfunctional way. The “shocking” ending was completely unnecessary in my opinion. To me it seemed as if Breillat ran out of ideas at the end. Or that she was rushed somehow and just threw that ending in without a lot of thought. Or some studio executive said “Hey, we have plenty of sex in your picture, now we need some violence”. It is so out of place with the rest of the film. There certainly are other ways to have just as powerful a message without the quick violent scene. I really hate to say it, but the ending is very Hollywoodish. The one thing it did for me was keep me from renting any of her other films.
Spot on Justin….
and the device of the mother weaving through trucks is the same she used on Brief Crossing, setting us up for one thing for an inordinate length of time and then delivering another. She gets you to expect a car crash, holds it so long that you get past expecting it, just when you think I guess it won’t be a car crash, SURPRISE!! and it gels perfectly with how the girls set it up at the start… the skinny girl wants a romantic de-flowering, the fat girl is not so sentimental. Briellat seems to be saying, well, which one was worse? equally horrible really.
Life is not that easy to compartmentalise into romantic fantasies, ugly shit happens and we have to deal with it.
A brave film, but not for the faint hearted…. I thought it was very good.
It’s about a fat girl, a really fat girl, who is alone and isolated, vying for the attention her sister seems to always steal from her. She’s a loner, addicted to Prozac, and has no friends. It’s about overcoming adversity, and the world’s cruel treatment of big boned people.
Joe, have you seen the film?
Just curious because Prozac never comes into play.
So all heavy people need to be on Prozac? That’s enlightened.
lol. Just joking. :)
I thought it was very good, although Romance and An Old Mistress are probably better Breillat films.
One thing I love about Breillat is the unique perspective she seems to bring to her films. She’s certainly not afraid to explore complex and difficult issues, and, well, that’s what art is all about. That and she’s one of the few great female directors of the last few decades. I think that gives her work heightened importance.
My interpretation of the ending was simply that the Fat Girl could only lose her virginity through rape and she didn’t care that it was rape, as long as she was desired. In a way, she’s victorious because the criminal kills the other women in her family, those who represent our notions of beauty but are not virgins, and chooses to rape her.
I really enjoyed Fat Girl.
In Re: Subject Title. Yes.
I’ve just watched the film and its corresponding interviews on the Criterion disc, and I think that the key to really understanding the film and its ending in particular is to note that its original French title was, À ma soeur! with the emphasis on the dynamic between the girls, not just on Anais. In one of the interviews available on the DVD, Breillat talks about how difficult it can be to have a sister, and how even though you will share more with a sibling than any other person, you need to symbolically kill that sibling (or siblings, or other family members) in order to exist as your own person. Considering this comment, I think the end is a sort of fantasy of revenge and self comfort. It’s Anais telling herselt that the beautiful women are really going to get it in the end, because they can delude themselves that they are more than objects to the men who would pursue them. Anais sees herself as above it. Her eyes are open, and she’ll make it out in the end unscathed. Her reaction to being raped fits in with this. If rape is about aggression and asserting power, then her non-reaction is the ultimate Fuck You. I mean, she even says outright, “You can’t hurt me.” I think that the film, when read this way, is its most sad and beautiful. It’s about a girl who feels that no one wants to touch her, so she makes herself completely untouchable, physically through the insulation of extra weight, and mentally through her assertion to herself that she is above it all to the extent that she could imagine not caring about being raped (and under particularly horrific and brutal circumstances at that)
.
Anyway, this is my preferred interpretation of the film at the moment, but as I continue to think about it, it’s meaning continues to shift. I count this as the mark of a great film.
Justin, a superb reading of this film!
I have not seen this film but after reading some of these discussions, I am really intrigued about it. I love films that challenge people in different ways. Even if you thought some of it was dispicable or just stuff you wouldn’t want to see, it obviously had an impact to you if you are speaking about it here. And to me that’s the best thing a director can get from his/her audience, a ginuine reaction. At least everyone isn’t saying it’s full of bad acting, lighting, etc. and instead are having great discussions about the story and characters. That’s what film is all about to me, when you watch something and you feel it in some type of emotion, even if the emotion is sad/unhappy. At least you feel it, not a whole lot of movies made these days make you feel something as a human.
Thanks KJ. I like what Carrie is saying. It heartens me that someone else was moved by this film.
I haven’t seen Fat Girl since it’s run years ago. Reading what you and Carrie wrote, Justin, has reminded me how good it is, and made me want to see it again. I’ve just bumped it to the top of my Netflix queue. Thanks.
Carrie, that’s a great, very insightful reading. When I saw the movie for the first time, the ending (along with the rest of the film) seemed so terribly and excessively negative. But thinking of the rape in terms of a sort of fantasy of independence puts it in a more meaningful light to me.
Thank you Miranda.
I just finished watching Fat Girl and my reaction was pretty much, “wtf” because of the surreal ending. It was good to read everyone’s take here on it, some very scary and some pretty life-affirming (thanks Justin B.). Like Carrie, I think it’s the mark of a great piece of art that inspires reaction, reflection and some kind of shift, either immediate or eventual in the beholder. I’ll definitely try some of Breillat’s other films.
Michael, I can say as a woman, that when I was that age and young men – or old men – for that matter used those lines on me I had no idea they didn’t mean it. The film is honest, and it’s from a woman’s perspective, not a man’s. Unfortunately, it is that easy for men to manipulate a lot of young girls, and I know that’s disturbing, but generally when a young girl likes a guy they are very open and trusting. It’s generally understood that you as a man know when another guy is manipulating a girl with words, but that’s because you have met manipulating men and have probably heard them bragging about it, so you’re alerted to this. But men don’t brag to women about manipulating girls, so we usually don’t realize until it’s too late. That scene, for me, is what WON my suspension of disbelief.
The other thing that I think Breillat is saying is that the pretty girl is at more at a disadvantage in terms of trusting the lies of men because her prettiness has meant that the world has treated her a certain way — i.e., with an unrealistic sense of love and support. Whereas the plain, heavy sister is already aware of what it’s like to get screwed up the ass, so to speak. So she can see it coming in a way the pretty sister can’t.
My favorite scene will always be the one in the pool where Anais has her stable, respectful husband (the deck) and her dirty, exciting lover (the railing), and she goes back and forth kissing each one and telling it why she loves it or why it turns her on.
Can we please have some sort of official discussion topic on Fat Girl so I have to watch it. T’s thread on Salo is what gave me the little push to say “fuck it I will be tortured for two hours”. I need another push.
Or you know I could just make the decision on my own to watch the film.
It’s not such a torturous film to watch. I definitely think it’s worth watching.
Oh I am 100% sure it is worth watching, that isn’t the issue. Really it isn’t torturous? I heard it was pretty bad (in a content sort of way not in a film sort of way).
It’s uncomfortable, definitely, but you can always understand why Breillat is showing the things she shows. It is, except arguably for the controversial ending, much less giving the impression of being “gratuitous” than Salo does at times.
Fat Girl has now been bumped up in my queue from 37 to 3. I somewhat look forward to finally seeing it.
I found it to be a realistic coming of age story. I enjoy seeing a girl grow up without a complete makeover or finally getting that guy she dreamed about for years to ask her out or the school finally making it to state in some sport. The ending was not odd since the whole movie you grew to loath her family as much as she did.
SPOILERS WARNING!!!
To me this film works like mirrors. I think Anais mirrors the true emotional state of her siste Elena when she is loosing her virginity(s). The second part of the movie or “the ending” mirrors the first part of the movie but in more obvious, direct and violent manner.Whe Fernando takes advantage of Elena he affects the little women the same way the rapist/killer does during the final scene of the film. 5/5 btw.
Andrew Marcus
I like her films a lot. They are, by and large, extremely challenging and disturbing. And Fat Girl is indeed horrific, perhaps more so than any of her other films. But if Breillat keeps making them, I’ll keep watching.