This the first film by notorious French director Catherine Breillat. It was frequently banned back in its day, but I actually found it a lot less disturbing than some of the same director's subsequent efforts (i.e. "36 Fillete", "To My Sister"). The film focuses on an adolescent girl who comes home from boarding school to her parents' isolated country home. There she entertains herself by mercilessly teasing the local male rustics (and even trying to get a rise out of her own father), narcissistically examining her nude body in the mirror, putting silverware down the front of her knickers, and at one point even "buggering" herself with a spray bottle. She eventually becomes obsessed with a young, married employee of her father's, and after a series of increasing bizarre fantasies, sets about trying to ham-handedly seduce him. But this is definitely NOT your average "coming-of-age" story.
Both the French and English titles suggests that this is a story about a REAL (as opposed to "really") young girl. And although her behavior and fantasies are pretty bizarre and often surreal, the movie does capture some of perverse, morbid nature of adolescence that many "coming of age" movies avoid. There is an obsession with odors. The girl is fascinated with the smell of her own sex and at one point takes off her panties and puts them on the face of a dead and rotting dog (which she perhaps associates with the same smell of decay). There are also bizarre fantasies involving such unusual, but certainly perverse and morbid, sexual props as earthworms and feathers. The sound of buzzing flies is constantly heard on the soundtrack lending to an oppressive morbid atmosphere of death and decay. Obviously, this movie in many ways is not particularly erotic.
In her typical fashion though Breillat has cast a beautiful twenty-something softcore porn actress (Charlotte Alexandra, who also appeared in "Immoral Tales" and "Goodbye, Emanuelle")as the "teenager". This does add some eroticism, but obviously takes away from the realism. It's hard to believe a girl that looks like Alexandra would have difficulty seducing ANYBODY, and she would certainly be surrounded by both male admirers and female friends even in the most godforsaken part of France. Alexandra is surprisingly good in the role, however, and she is fairly convincing as a teenager (at least with her clothes on). At any rate, I'm certainly not going to complain that THIS part wasn't played by an actual fourteen-year-old girl or a less physically attractive actress. It would have made it more "real" I guess, but it also would have been pretty damn hard to watch. As it is, it's a pretty interesting film--a strange mixture of lyrical eroticism and morbid fascination with death and decay.
Both the French and English titles suggests that this is a story about a REAL (as opposed to "really") young girl. And although her behavior and fantasies are pretty bizarre and often surreal, the movie does capture some of perverse, morbid nature of adolescence that many "coming of age" movies avoid. There is an obsession with odors. The girl is fascinated with the smell of her own sex and at one point takes off her panties and puts them on the face of a dead and rotting dog (which she perhaps associates with the same smell of decay). There are also bizarre fantasies involving such unusual, but certainly perverse and morbid, sexual props as earthworms and feathers. The sound of buzzing flies is constantly heard on the soundtrack lending to an oppressive morbid atmosphere of death and decay. Obviously, this movie in many ways is not particularly erotic.
In her typical fashion though Breillat has cast a beautiful twenty-something softcore porn actress (Charlotte Alexandra, who also appeared in "Immoral Tales" and "Goodbye, Emanuelle")as the "teenager". This does add some eroticism, but obviously takes away from the realism. It's hard to believe a girl that looks like Alexandra would have difficulty seducing ANYBODY, and she would certainly be surrounded by both male admirers and female friends even in the most godforsaken part of France. Alexandra is surprisingly good in the role, however, and she is fairly convincing as a teenager (at least with her clothes on). At any rate, I'm certainly not going to complain that THIS part wasn't played by an actual fourteen-year-old girl or a less physically attractive actress. It would have made it more "real" I guess, but it also would have been pretty damn hard to watch. As it is, it's a pretty interesting film--a strange mixture of lyrical eroticism and morbid fascination with death and decay.