| Uncovering the beauty, brutality of seduction
By Loren King, Globe Correspondent, 11/25/2001 Many American audiences became acquainted with Breillat's work
via the audacious ''Romance'' (1998) in which Breillat blurred the boundaries
between art and voyeurism - triggering the age-old question, Is it art or
is it pornography? ''Romance'' divided audiences into those that hailed the
film as an erotic masterpiece, those that dismissed it as sexual titillation
posing as postfeminist tract, and others who saw it as the complete negation
of desire. Her latest film, ''Fat Girl,'' which opens Friday, is less
sexually explicit than ''Romance'' but it has nonetheless raised the ire
of the Ontario Film Review Board, which objected to the film's candid depiction
of adolescent sexuality. In ''Fat Girl'' two sisters, Anais, a chubby 12-year-old,
and Elena, a pretty 15-year-old, are on holiday with their parents. Elena
meets Fernando, an older Italian student, and is eager to lose her virginity
to him. The centerpiece seduction scene is a symphony of tension and release,
and the push-pull of desire and shame. The film board refused to issue a rating to ''Fat Girl,'' which,
says Noah Cowan, co-president of Cowboy Pictures, the film's distributor,
is tantamount to banning the film. Unlike the US system, films cannot be
screened in Ontario theaters without a rating. ''The film's images are not
there to titillate,'' Cowan says. ''We want the film to be rated; we don't
want people thinking it's a nice romantic comedy.'' The board objected to the sex scenes in ''Fat Girl'' because
they depict teenage characters. Chairman Robert Warren told Indiewire, a
wire service, that the board's ratings standard specifically forbids scenes
that depict characters under 18 who are nude, partially nude, or in a sexually
suggestive context. The board offered two options to Cowboy Pictures and its Canadian
partner, Lions Gate Films: appeal the board's ruling or cut the offending
scenes. Not surprisingly, Breillat refused to change her film, and the distributors
appealed. On Tuesday, the board voted 3-2 against ''Fat Girl.'' In a letter to the Ontario board, Breillat noted that one of
her early films, ''36 Fillette'' (1987), also portrays the first sexual experience
of a 14-year-old on holiday, a situation similar to the one in ''Fat Girl.''
Yet ''36 Fillette'' is readily available on video in Toronto. ''Unlike my previous film `Romance,' I made a choice not to
show one single explicit sexual scene in `Fat Girl,''' wrote Breillat. ''The
film is forbidden only to those under age 12 in France, whereas 'Romance'
is forbidden to those under the age of 16.'' Interviewed in New York, where ''Fat Girl'' premiered at the
New York Film Festival in September, Breillat says the 26-minute seduction
scene was a meticulously prepared shot. ''The actresses are in the frame
the entire time, so blocking had to be very precise. The camera had to be
in the same position where the eye wanted to be. When [the scene] works,
I got the expected emotion and also results that were unexpected.'' Thematically, this sequence is a precursor to the shattering
conclusion of ''Fat Girl.'' ''The seduction scene is a mental rape,'' says Breillat. ''[Elena]
allows herself to be in this position, to be with a man who is lying. She
is an accomplice because she knows he's lying, and so she loses her dignity.
... It's normal for teenagers to want this sort of sexual relationship during
vacation. It's not meaningful, but teenagers are forced to dramatize it.''
Breillat says audiences can take the ending of her film however
they like, as literal or as fantasy. '''Fat Girl' is like a fairy tale, and spectators can interpret
it for themselves,'' she says. ''I like to make spectators work with their
own ideas of what is violent and brutal and what is intolerable.'' During question-and-answer sessions with festival audiences
in Toronto and New York, Breillat says most remarks concerned the violence
in ''Fat Girl.'' But after the Sept. 11 attacks, New York audiences seemed
less jolted by the brutality in the film, Breillat says, and less inclined
to ask questions about the film's ending. Breillat's film career, which includes co-writing scripts with
Liliana Cavani for ''La Peau'' and with Federico Fellini for ''E la nave
va,'' has largely concerned itself with themes of sexuality, power, and relationships
between women and men. She's considered as sexually provocative in her native
France as she is in North America. Breillat laughs that she was ''born into
controversy'' but describes herself as ''a normal person'' with a ''normal
interest in sex.'' It is society that displays an abnormal interest in sex,
she says, making it ''impossible to be normal.'' Breillat, whose older sister is actress Marie Helene Breillat,
asserts that ''Fat Girl'' isn't autobiographical. ''Fat Girl'' was always
the intended title, she says, but in France the film was released as ''A
ma soeur'' (To My Sister). Though contemporary, the film has the look and
feel of the 1960s: It transcends time as it juxtaposes sibling rivalry with
sexual awakening as effortlessly as the sisters switch, in an instant, from
flinging insults at one another to expressing tenderness and solidarity. Breillat bristles at the controversy surrounding ''Fat Girl''
as well as over the sexual content of her other films. ''Everybody has sex;
it is important not just for pleasure but for a sense of life, for everybody,''
she says. ''Human sexuality is a beautiful expression, not something dirty
or disgusting.'' Breillat will continue to explore this fertile if dangerous
terrain. This month she began shooting another film, which she describes
as her own ''81/2.'' It will be, she says, a personal examination about ''what
it is to make films, and all our fears, and all our inhibitions about sex.''
This story ran on page L9 of the Boston Globe
on 11/25/2001.
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