August 17, 2006
Fat Girl
Not your sentimental coming of age story
Meet Anaïs, the twelve year-old, title character of Catherine Breillat's film, Fat Girl, and Elena, the beautiful, older sister Anaïs feels overshadowed by. Anaïs is a zaftig-figured, lonesome girl, whose sense of imagination keeps her distraught, sexually frustrated ego afloat. Elena is the high schooler with the svelte, fully matured body of a twenty one year old. Thanks to Elena's good looks and eye-catching body, she has attracted the attention of plenty boys. And she has gotten past every base - that is, except the last one.
In light of Elena's blossoming female physique, their sibling rivalry has since intensified. For the post-pubescent, horny Elena, the physique is equated to sensuality. Elena becomes averse to the idea of fat and to Anaïs, in particular. Elena holds no bars when it comes to expressing her disgust; she sneers whenever Anaïs munches gluttonously at the dinner table.
It is all the more ironic that sex, a coming-of-age matter, that has helped turn the two sisters into bitter rivals, is, alas, something that gives a reason for the pair an opportunity to share and confide.
Throughout the duration of Fat Girl, Breillat frames her story around Anaïs, Elena, and Elena's new boyfriend named Fernando. Elena's parents, cautious of their daughter's budding sexuality, allow her to go out with Fernando; with the exception that Anaïs is tagging along, a few steps behind the pair. As a third wheel, Anaïs is usually framed in the center with her ice cream, or teetering on the edge as Elena and Fernando touch and grope in most of the frame. Brelliat makes it clear that Anaïs is self-aware of her physical shortcomings and how her hefty weight has left her suitor-less; in stark contrast to her sexually adventurous older sister.
Anaïs' third wheel position, of course doesn't do her ego any favors. So instead of fretting over solitude, the imaginative, sexual Anaïs dreams up an imaginary boyfriend for herself, kissing pool stairs, in lieu of a real boyfriend and making up lines for both persons.
Elena's sexual relationship with Fernando is explicitly depicted, to say the least. Breillat holds behind no bars when it comes to sex, for it is the central focus for all the three main players: Elena, Fernando, and Anaïs, as well. Though it is understandable that some viewers will be turned off by generous images of skin and flesh, I'd argue that it is, indeed, the point. The sex sequences are meant to be uncomfortable rather than titillating, as an unequal power struggle between the sexes ensues.
Elena initially sways off Fernando's consummating advances. She expresses doubt about whether their relationship is truly based upon love, and hesitates when Fernando speaks of the other girls he has bedded with (she does not want to be another anonymous name on his list). But Fernando, ever the smooth talker, eventually succeeds in taking Elena's virginity by speaking in a certain vernacular that would appeal to any warm-blooded girl: touching upon the matters of the heart.
A smooth, persistent charmer, Fernando uses words to win over Elena. He softens the descriptions of anal sex ("proof of love"), fellatio ("wonderful gift") and vaginal sex ("You're the kind of girl that men dream of marrying"), implying the sentimental significance behind it. A contrast between Fernando's mellifluous words and the actual acts of sex Fernando himself imposes upon the virginal Elena is clearly established. If the soft words of "love" and "dream" and "gift" stroke Elena's romantic, estrogen-induced dreams of what she WANTS sex to be, then it is apt to say that the reality of what sex actually is crushing.
During anal and vaginal sex, we see and hear Elena crying, as the hyper-testosterone-charged Fernando shoves himself violently into her each time (in the latter scene, Elena urges Fernando to go "gently", but to of no avail). And during fellatio, Elena is presented in a submissive female role, as Breillat shoots Fernando standing from head to knee in a medium long shot; the back of Elena's anonymous head, turned to the camera, is relegated to the bottom corner of the frame.
Witnessing these volatile, sexual episodes from a limited distance is Anaïs, who lies in a bed across from Elena's. As a passive voyeur, Anaïs is placed in a tricky situation. We see Anaïs squirming in her bed during anal sex; she clearly disapproves of what Fernando is doing to her sister. But clearly, it would not be in Anaïs's best interest if she expressed her disapproval of Fernando. Elena deems Anaïs comparable to a "ball and chain". Anaïs is smart enough to know that any more interventionist moves, and she'll be considered as the perennial Third Wheel.
Wrapped under pillows and blankets, Anaïs blubbers in tears as Elena finally consummates her relationship with Fernando. Although their sisterly rivalry still brims on the surface, their love and attachment to one another, as romantic, love-lorn girls, run deeper. Anaïs' empathy for Elena's pain calls to mind a conversation the two had earlier, as they self-reflexively ruminated upon their contrasting images in the mirror:
Elena: No one would think we're sisters. It's true. We don't take after anyone. It's like we're born of ourselves. It's funny. We really have nothing in common. Look at you. You have small hard eyes while mine are hazy. But when I look deep in your eyes, it makes me feel like I belong, as if they were my eyes.
Anaïs: That's why we're sisters. When I hate you, I look at you and then I can't. It's like hating part of myself. That's why I loathe you so violently, because you ought to be like me. But at times I have the feeling you're the exact opposite.
Although Anaïs and Elena each inhabit two completely different bodies, they share the same dream-seeking, romantic - and dare I say female - soul. The irony here is that it takes a manipulative member of the opposite sex - of whom they fantasize at the expense of sisterhood - that leads to such a realization.
Those expecting this film to be a conventional love story between a male and female will be sorely disappointed; Fat Girl, whose original French title, A Mon Soeur literally means For My Sister, is, first and foremost, a (platonic) love story about two females, as they struggle with adolescence and womanhood, and a meditation upon troubling heterosexual relations, second.
It has been days since I have first seen Fat Girl, yet Anaïs' description of how violent her hatred for Elena is, still lingers on. There is a disturbing sense of violence that bleeds into Elena's intimate relations with Anaïs and Fernando. Breillat insists that love is not the flip side of violence. Rather, she argues, they interchange so quickly that it becomes difficult to distinguish one from the other.
Breillat's obsession with the dialectical nature of love and violence could not be better articulated than in the haunting last words echoed by Anaïs:
Police officer: She was in the woods. She says he didn't rape her.
Anaïs: Don't believe me if you don't want to.
Some viewers, driven by moral outrage, may see it fit to deem Breillat as a reprehensible artist to be reckoned with (the last ten minutes of Fat Girl are, indeed, graphic and disturbing). But as I see it, such concern undermines the entire point of the film: Sex lurks in mysterious, ambivalent ways - why make sense of it?
