À ma soeur! (2001)
Directed by Catherine Breillat

Film Review

In the wake of the controversy caused by Romance (her first internationally distributed film), Catherine Breillat created even more of a stir with À ma soeur!, a film which provides a cruel, shockingly explicit portrait of adolescent sexual awakening.  The film bears some striking similarities with Breillat's earlier film 36 fillette, which also revolves around a teenage girl who is keen to experience her first sexual encounter.   However, in À ma soeur!, Breillat goes much further - perhaps too far - in its graphic depiction of one girl's self-willed deflowering.   The film pushes what can be legally shown on a cinema screen to its limit, and most spectators will probably find the film both offensive and disturbing.

Again, Breillat is not well-served by her affinity for the controversial.  In being so fragrantly provocative, the film diminishes its force and its poetry, and succeeds in alienating its audience.   The film's brutal noirish ending is a particular example of the director's intention to shock overriding her artistic judgement.  This ending could plausibly be interpreted as a dream sequence, conjured up by the troubled mind of the traumatised Anaïs.  However, unlike the dream sequences in Breillat's earlier film Romance, the scene is filmed with a dogged realism which rather gives the impression that it is not a dream.

The brutality of the film's ending takes a sledgehammer to everything that precedes it and demolishes what, for the most part, is a credible and poignant depiction of two teenage sisters coming to terms with their sexuality.   This is a shame because in many ways À ma soeur! is Breillat's most mature work to date, revealing a director of immense skill and sensitivity and featuring some genuinely impressive acting talent.  With a little more self-censorship and more restrained denouement, À ma soeur! would unquestionably have been a much greater film.

Film Synopsis

Whilst on holiday with her family, 15 year old Elena meets an an older Italian student, Fernando.  Elena is eager to fall in love and Fernando, a smooth-talking Don Juan type, persaudes her to have sex with him.  This experience upsets Elena's younger sister, Anaïs, who is overweight and has little chance of having an amorous encounter herself.  Although she is made jealous and anxious by her sister's illicit affair, Anaïs finds herself a reluctant accomplice in keeping it from their parents.