À ma soeur/ Fat Girl (Breillat, 2001)

À ma soeur (Catherine Breillat, 2001), also known by its strange non-translation English name, Fat Girl provides a shocking look at the sexual 'coming of age' so to speak of two sisters. The most controversial part of the film, and the most talked about in the reviews I have read is the last scene. More specifically, the last line in the film is arguably the most disturbing part of the film.

At the film's close the last words spoken by the young Anaïs to the police are that they "don't have to believe [her]." Some reviews interpret this as an admission of consent, and go so far as to say that she is happy with her mother and sister's outcome. This does not seem like a justified analysis of this statement.

Throughout the film, she is portrayed as the most 'normal' of the family. The father is an absent, disconnected, workaholic, the mother seems to have some skeletons in here closet and something else on her mind, and the older sister, Elena, is hysterically desperate for and delusional about 'womanhood' and sex. Although Anaïs is portrayed as extremely jealous of her older sister, and an over-eater, this things are both fairly normal and rational things for a twelve year old younger sibling to do.

She does make it known earlier in the film that she would like to lose her virginity to a 'nobody', but a murderous trucker is certainly not what she meant by that. In the scene she is clearly scared and upset, like her sister was, and neither of them truly wanted it. Finally, she is far to young to make that kind of decision. When asked if it was rape, she is too young to make the distinction, especially after such a traumatic event.