À ma soeur (Fat Girl)

15-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida) and her 12-year-old sister, Anais (Anais Reboux) are holidaying with their parents. The squabbling siblings share a room where they talk at night about boys and sex. Anais is uncomfortably aware that her size makes her, potentially, less attractive than her older sister. Elena meets an Italian student, Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), several years older than she is, and invites him to visit her in her bedroom.

Catherine Breillat's interest in female sexuality has been apparent from her very first film, and, after the controversial Romance last year, A Ma Soeur returns to the themes of 36 Fillette, which she made in 1988 – the delicate subject of the first sexual experience of a young woman. It is, of course, a controversial theme, because Breillat isn't interested in the gross-out, slapstick approach to sex found in American teen comedies; her aim is to depict realistically, and in considerable detail, the events that lead to Elena's willing loss of virginity, and at the same time to explore the most intimate feelings of her protagonists. She elicits painfully natural performances from the two girls here, especially in the long central seduction sequence. When she hits the audience with a shocking conclusion, the result is as powerful as it is arbitrary. It's a film for seriously-minded adult audiences, and the French title, For My Sister, is infinitely better than the silly English title, Fat Girl.