Fat Girl (aka A Mo Soeur)

French/86 Minutes/2001/Not Rated

First let me say that I hate the American title of this film “Fat Girl.” It engenders every sentiment that this film is opposed to, at lest in my interpretation. The literal title is “For My Sister” which makes much more sense and is a more appropriate title for this touching, realistic depiction of adolescent sexuality, the definitions of womanhood, and the relationship of siblings.

The story is an old and simple one. Anais (Anais Reboux) and Elena (Roxane Mesquida) are two high-school age sisters on a summer vacation. Anais is overweight and plain while Elena is sleek and sexual. Elena is always smiling and bubbling, unconcerned. Anais is withdrawn and somber, living in an interior world. She sings to herself tragic songs of love lost and birds picking at her corpse. In once scene she moves between a wooden diving board and a metal ladder in a swimming pool treating each like a lover, saying things like “of course you're the only one” and asking the diving board if he is jealous. It is a beautiful and heartbreaking scene that is captured with tenderness and that is what makes “Fat Girl” one of my favorite films.

While on vacation Elena meets a handsome college boy, Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), who is also on vacation (from Italy) and they fall quickly into that awkward young love that is so poorly portrayed in cinema. Anais is both suspicious of and jealous of her sister's relationship. She shares a room with her sister and is privy to all her sister's secrets. When Elena has Fernando over Anais can't sleep for the noise. At times she watches curiously and at other times she is crying. Each of the characters are emotionally complex and treated with respect by director Catherine Breillat.

When Fernando is lying in bed with Elena trying to convincer her to make love, he says the things that all men are guilty of saying, “of course I'll respect you” and “you can show your love for me.” As corny or malicious as it may sound on paper, Fernando is not imbued with any ill intentions by the actor or director. He is infatuated with Elena and (like most men) would say anything to have her. His scenes with Elena are filled with mixed emotions and trepidation. She cries, she is unsure and is so totally human. She is young and a virgin and like all people (who are honest with themselves) she is afraid of sex and life after it. Part of the film's strength comes from exploring emotions of a child turned lover and the complexities that it entails.

Anais on the other hand manages to be both more cynical and more sensitive than her older sister. Her scenes alone are heartbreaking as she sits in familiar isolation living out her dreams while realizing how pitiful she is. She does not like her body (as many kids her age do not) but Breillat does not show her as disgusting or treat her as somehow less worthy of love and attraction than her sister. That is partly why I'm confounded by the English title. It is so utterly American where the film is most certainly not. In fact the film goes to emotional depths that are rare in cinema, especially between the sisters.

Anais and Elena fight like sisters but they also love like sisters. There relationship is complex. They yell at each other and call names. They slap one another and wound deeply with words as only a sibling can. But for every scene of violence and anger there are scenes of solidarity and love. There are tender scenes where they talk to each other like sisters, but more importantly like little girls. They recall their childhood and in one scene they talk about looking into one anothers' eyes and feeling complete. It is in these times that we realize that Anais isn't truly jealous or hateful, she loves her sister so much and her sister loves her that they have the explosive element only found among siblings. Perhaps what is saddest is Anais' fear that Fernando will replace her, that her sister will no longer need her around. Elena, after all, is her window to the world.

Anais in fact says she does not want to know her first lover well, that way they won't have to fall out of love and feel foolish, or the boy brag about his conquest. She seems already burned by love having never had it, carrying around the dark weight of someone twice her age. It may be “better to have loved and lost” but for Anais the thought of the loss overwhelms the desire for love, so she daydreams of loneliness and love forsaken. The resolution of her story is both terrifying and understandable and we realize that she has lost the only thing of importance to her as well as the thing she hates most.

The film turns tragic in the last half, with real adult consequences coming for the youths. Breillat deftly captures the shame that outsiders can bring to a sexual relationship, somehow implying that such simple love, such foolish innocence, are things for which we should feel embarrassed. In one confrontation with her mother Elena asks “I suppose you never had a first (lover)?” to which mother replies “this is not about me,” at once denying her own shame and the right to sexuality of her daughter. Breillat sets this up dispassionately as we look through the eyes of Anais. When she hears that her father wants to have Elena examined (to see if she is still a virgin) Anais says “I don't see why others think it is their business.”

The final scenes are quite a shock and I'm not sure that I like the “deus ex machina” approach to the resolution. It feels like Breillat may have said everything she wanted to say and needed a way to resolve one final thread. It is a case where something in real life would feel like grand and random misfortune but in the context of a film seems merely convenient. Whether this is a deficiency in storytelling or just a limitation of the medium I cannot yet decide. The film makes a strong statement I'm just not sure what exactly it is.

The power and uniqueness of Breillat's film is that it treats the girls honestly, never making them young adults (like Ellen Page in “Hard Candy”) or innocent children preyed upon by older men. They are autonomous, capable of love and being loved and expressing their sexuality. Granted, in many cases they do not realize the possible consequences of their actions but how many lovers begin just so. Part of growing up is experiencing and learning from those tentative steps into sexual independence and the worst thing that can happen is for someone else to come in and say “this is wrong, you should be ashamed.”

Perhaps I see in this film a lot of myself and that may sway my perspective. However, I do not think this is completely the case. The sensitive subject is handled in a reverent and respectful manner. It does not skimp on showing sexuality but never feels prurient or for titillation (an excellent contrast would be to the work of Larry Clark). Breillat may be better known for her “pornographic” depictions but that is yet another exertion of an outside morality that does not seek to understand but to judge. While the film is graphic it focuses on the emotions surrounding these decisions and their consequences rather than beautiful people necking for our pleasure. This film is highly recommended.

Not Rated: Mature Audiences, contains Graphic Nudity, Sexuality, and Brief Strong Violence Including a Rape, all involving teens

Cache (aka Hidden)

French/118 Minutes/2005/Rated R

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” - Sigmund Freud

The literal English translation of the title “Cache” is “Hidden,” a better title and a more apt description. For just as the characters have hidden things from each other, so has Haneke hidden the real drama from the viewer.

The story is supposedly about a well-to-do French couple, Georges and Anne (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) who are terrorized by someone sending them tapes of the outside of their house. The tapes are accompanied by child-like drawings of violence. These pictures draw to mind an unresolved guilt of Georges' and when the tapes lead him to a childhood friend things start to unravel.

In “Cache” Haneke has intentionally made a film that is difficult and ambiguous. He shoots in excruciatingly long takes (as long as 3 minutes of a static shot) that force us to focus on what is occurring within the frame. Characters come and go within the frame and many times in wide shot where their encounters have no sound leaving us to make what we will of them. The viewer is made to feel as much the voyeur as the spy sending the tapes. Perhaps that is Haneke's intent.

Indeed many times we are unsure if we are watching the film itself, one of the tapes sent to Georges and Anne, or the filming of one of the tapes. In fact the first scene is a static shot of their house from the outside that lasts for three minutes before the characters start talking off screen and begin fast forwarding through the video. The film is very ambiguous and plays with the fourth wall in a similar way to Haneke's movie Funny Games.

“Cache” is not a movie to be watched but rather to be absorbed and thought about. When the film first ended and I sat down to write this review I was very unimpressed, however, the longer I thought about it (and admittedly trawled the message boards) the more the film seemed to bloom, peeling away layers that revealed the film that I did not think was there.

On the down side we are drawn almost too far outside the drama, the characters too isolated. In many ways Haneke's film is less a dramatic film than an observance. And the presence of some dramatic forward motion, some conflict that grows and is then resolved, is what differentiates a film from an assembled home movie. Unfortunately “Cache” falls closer to home movie than good movie and that is ultimately its undoing.

While “Cache” may grow upon reflection there is still much that could be done to make it less abstract and more engaging. The film forgets that film is a “show me” medium and would rather keep things so open to interpretation that the film ultimately says nothing significant. There is an interesting movie in here somewhere, but it feels too unfocused to make its mark. Not recommended (unless you're a film student).

Rated R for Brief Strong Violence (also contains brief nudity and language)

The Last Deadly Mission (AKA MR 37)

French/125 Minutes/Not Rated

I happened to find this little gem on the shelf of my local Blockbuster and admittedly I was struck by the cover. It's a profile shot of Daniel Auteuil with a sharp pointed font shouting “The Last Deadly Mission.” I liked that the guy on the cover didn't look like an airbrushed big named 30 something. When I figured out it was a French film, everything made sense.

I'm going to take part of this review to rail against Blockbuster's marketing of their Exclusive films like this one. The front cover you see implies a dangerous thriller or action film. The back cover says:

“Where Justice Ends... Vengeance Begins. An out of control cop dangerously close to the edge is the only one who can protect a young woman from the murderous insanity of a serial killer. Destroyed by the death of his wife and child, Detective Louis Schneider (Daniel Auteuil) is lost until he agrees to protect Justine (Olivia Bonamy) from the madman who forced her to watch him kill her mother and father. Tough, gritty, and violent, this dark, exciting, true crime story is based on writer and director Olivier Marchal's real-life experiences as a street cop.”

Normally I wouldn't quote something so long but I do so to say this: the back cover does not describe the movie accurately AT ALL. In fact it barely describes the last act, ignoring the preceeding 100 minutes all together and his wife is NOT DEAD! There is no agreement to protect the “damsel in distress” and it's a true crime story in the same way that any Law and Order episode is, which is to say, crime happens, so it's based on a true story.

You would think from the cover and the description that this is a cop/victim thriller in the vein of Blink or maybe Jagged Edge, etc. Maybe it will be another titillating bit of exploitation, some T&A and some good gore effects, right? Nothing could be further from the truth. What Marchal provides here is not a thriller but a character study of a cop who is slowly dying on the inside and the slimy world he inhabits. It's closest analogue in American cinema (or any recent cinema) would be Abel Ferrera's Bad Lieutenant or perhaps Takashi Kitano's Fireworks (Hana-Bi).

Much like Keitel in Bad Lieutenant, Daniel Auteiul plays Louis as a man who has been beaten up by the world and is content to just wallow in his misery, going through the motions of life. But Louis is not a man in search of redemption or even considering it. In the films opening lines he says “God is a son of a bitch. Some day I will kill him.” This is as close as we get to his true interior life.

Marchal's characters are enigmas to us, but not to themselves. Gazes between characters are filled with knowledge and history, most of which is left for us to infer. Flashbacks are disjointed, shown in brief glimpses, ever longer, but never revealing all there is to see. We are never allowed the details or to be inside the character's head or motivations.

Just as we are never allowed to experience the interior lives of the characters, Marchal's directing choices seem determined to keep us at a distance (with a few rare exceptions). Even with such lurid material as a serial killer, dirty cops, and sexual misdeeds, the shots are reserved but not hesitant. Nothing is stylized and the sex and violence aren't used for titillation. If anything this respectful treatment of death and the human condition is what makes the violence that much more real.

For example, the first crime scene is presented with little lead up. The men walk in the room and see an older woman, naked and covered in blood laying on a bed. There is no shock, no longing shots of a nude body. Rather it all has a rather stark feel to it, much like anyone else. Go to work, check out the in box (ah, dead body number 5), get started. The film is striking in its unwillingness to engage us on a visceral level and instead lets us think about the characters and their actions.

The story is essentially about incredibly damaged and beaten down people who have given up trying to make a difference. The cops are nearly all dirty and the clean ones are portrayed as slaves to the bureaucracy. The victims are all shattered, if not paralyzed by the evil that has exploded into their lives. Then there are the villains themselves who are just as evil as you might expect (or not expect).

Even in the final reel when the inevitable occurs it is not tinged with rage or catharsis but is shown rather matter-of-factly without extra fanfare, quick cuts or loud music. There is no monologuing. The characters never justify themselves to us or in many cases even to each other. The final showdown features no dialogue at all, just a brief action which is not dwelt upon.

This is a rare film that denies us the visceral catharsis but in doing so gives us something more. We are given ample time to observe and reflect, seeing the tragedies that unfold at a distance. The sympathy we have for Louis is born out of his commitment to doing the right thing. In the end it is his sense that the scales can be balanced, but at a high price, that leads his character's arc. Louis does not justify what he is does and neither does the director. Is what he doing futile? Does he care? That's for us to decide. Recommended.

NOT RATED: Mature Audiences, contains Strong Language, Sex/Nudity, Bloody Violence and Thematic Elements.