Review of Fat Girl (2001) by Katchoo _ — 20 May 2009

Because the levy initiative failed, the library is having to make some pretty drastic cutbacks. One of them, the one that will affect me most, is that they are dropping the number of holds you're allowed to have on your list to twenty-five. Now, I currently have twenty-four. However, this includes [i]The Wordy Shipmates[/i], where I am number thirty-three on the list. [i]Home for the Holidays[/i], where I am number forty-seven. [i]The Grifters[/i], where I am number thirty. I am still in line for [i]Freaks and Geeks[/i]. And today's film? Well, it starts with "FA." We're on "HO." I've been on the hold list for literally about eight months. (Which also tells you how quickly we're working through the alphabet--or how slowly!--but never mind.) [i]Fantasia[/i] took me about six. In order to get a dozen or so in a week, I've occasionally had nearly fifty on the list at any given time. Vexing. I understand, mind you--for starters, a lot of people don't pick up their holds in the ten days you get, and it costs the library manhours they can't afford anymore--but I still wish there were some way around it, even if it meant buying in somehow.

Anaïs Pingot (Anaïs Reboux), her sister Elena (Roxane Mesquida), and their parents (Arsinée Khanjian and Romain Goupil) are vacationing somewhere in the south of France (I'm pretty sure; I don't think it's ever specified). Elena meets handsome Italian law student Fernando (Libero De Rienzo) who woos the impressionable fifteen-year-old. Now, they are in the forced presence of Anaïs the whole time. And I do mean the [i]whole[/i] time. As Fernando introduces Elena to her sexuality, Anaïs is right there. The girls share a bedroom, and for some reason they don't even seem to turn the lights out when they are . . . doing what Fernando convinces Elena to do. And you must remember that Anaïs is twelve. Fernando is perfectly aware that Elena is too young--he even says once that he could go to jail over the affair--but it never seems to bother him that Anaïs is right there the whole time.

Anaïs is not like a normal twelve-year-old girl. For one, both girls seem isolated from other people their own age. Their parents, for example, do not seem to think it odd that a college-age student would be hanging around their daughter. They force the girls together, I think in the belief that Anaïs is a proper chaperone for her older sister. Fernando is the next-youngest person in the film. [i]His[/i] mother (Laura Betti) is the only person who expresses any concern at the relationship, and her main concern is the ring Fernando has given Elena. And at that, she believes that Elena conned him into doing it. There is no talk of either girl's having friends. In fact, I can't help wondering what they do with their time--there are no books and no television, either.

I can't get over how willing Fernando and Elena are to fool around in a lit room in front of Anaïs. Elena just says, "Oh, she's asleep," and that's all okay. She claims, in a conversation the girls have in one of their good moments, that she doesn't boss Anaïs around as she did when they were much younger, but she quite obviously does. It's just that neither of them notice or care. Their parents pay practically no attention to what goes on, either. Fernando spends the night at least once, leaving early in the morning, sure, but the light clearly shows it's not [i]that[/i] early. It's as though Anaïs isn't there--but the parents don't treat Elena much better. The girls almost feel like accessories after a while. Not people in their own right. The father tries to show an interest, but the mother is rather of the mind that children just do things, and it doesn't matter.

Okay, look. The ending is shocking and unexpected, and I'm not myself sure that it fits with the rest of the story, that it is anything more than "I couldn't think of how else to end this." The point of the film, I'm sure, is to shock, and [i]À ma soeur![/i] is more than accomplished at that. On the other hand, there is a major difference between the girls' attitude toward sex and their situation regarding one another and how things end. The last line does sum up Anaïs pretty successfully, but the five minutes before it feel wrong.