Breillat is a film genius.
Added 9/15/2007
Catherine Breillat (1948) is a brilliant French filmmaker, director and novelist. Her films are intended to take us places we've never been before, and usually outside our comfort zones with their depictions of hard sexual truths. As a result, Breillat no stranger to controversy. Although 36 Fillette (1988) is not among my favorite Breillat films (which include Fat Girl - Criterion Collection, Romance, and Brief Crossing (Breve Traversee)) it is nevertheless a worthwhile film (despite the poor film-to-dvd transfer quality).
As a precursor to her later work, Breillat's film confronts issues of sex and violence and contains provocative themes common to all of her later work. 36 Fillette tells the story of Lili (Delphine Zentout), a tempestuous 14-year-old French girl who flirts with one man after the next while vacationing with her family near Biarritz. She has decided it is "miserable" to be a virgin, and believes she is ready now lose her virginity at any risk. Despite her adolescent pout, Lili is depicted as a child in a woman's body, which (as the film's title also suggests) seems to be Breillat's point here: that in matters of sexuality, we are naive children living in adult-sized bodies. Zentout and Jean-Pierre Leaud (Francois Truffaut's Adventures of Antoine Doinel (The 400 Blows / Antoine & Collette / Stolen Kisses / Bed & Board / Love on the Run) - Criterion Collection) bring excellent performances to the film. It would be difficult to find Breillat's intellectualized sexual dialogue happening anywhere else in cinema, and like all of her films, this is a film people should be debating afterwards in cafes, bars, and their bedrooms.
G. Merritt
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Frustrating
Added 8/16/2006
Another frank and earnest film from director Catherine Breillat, who seems to have a knack for inviting controversy. Unlike some other reviewers, I thought this movie seemed very realistic. Many young people are curious about it would be like to have all the advantages of adulthood and are quick to experiment. How easy it is for a young lady, in this case fourteen, to attract an older man for such experimentation. The volunteers are potentially endless. We get a strong sense of the angst she is feeling as she goes through this confusing time as a teenager: still a girl, yet developed physically as a woman. It is not a great film by any means, but I consider it at least good. That is more than I can say for the quality of the DVD, however. As others have commented, it is not widescreen and the transfer appears to be from an old VHS tape. 3 stars for the movie, 1 star for the DVD. (To have an inferior DVD is better than having no DVD, I suppose)
5 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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First off, this little girl is a real bitch. As with most younger people; they want to be grown up before they're actually ready. I don't think it's very close to reality, but it does tell a reasonably interesting story.
I like the director... but compared, this isn't the best work.
0 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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Not one of Catherine's better films
Added 2/19/2006
You would be better off with "Fat Girl" or "A Very Young Girl" than this film about a pouty fourteen year-old brat whose life ambition apparently is just to have sex, but she is painfully conflicted and confused about how to go about it. The ogre she chooses is not much of a looker himself and she tells him so outright, with her amazing social skills. Not much of a storyline here as you can see, and the eye candy is rather on the pathetic side. Mostly the scenes are gross, if anything.
The video quality is about what you might expect from a bootleg VHS tape, i.e. very poor, and the sound quality matches the video quality.
5 out of 8 people found this helpful.
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Curiously unsatisfying, but not bad...
Added 3/26/2003
I first saw this film in an arthouse cinema when it was released, and I remember feeling that the film seemed a bit unsatisfying. I was rather hoping that Lili would actually make love to her much-older beau, but they seemed to be limited to hand jobs and oral sex (the first time she finally appears nude, late in the film, this is all they do; she hides under the bedsheets while he disappears with some other woman, and she is left, naked and crying, in the bed).Yet this is a decent film, and not the unbridled kiddie porn that so many reviewers here might have had it be (although I'm really thinking of "The Lover," I believe Delphine Zentout had to be at least 18 at the time the film was shot). What I find fascinating about these films is the fact that I know women whose sexual development is much like those of the female leads in these films. Lili even reminds me, now, of my fiancee in both physical and sexual aspect and, to some degree, psychological aspect. She (Lili) is a troubled girl with a deep and rarely satisfied desire to break free of her family, and her sexual pursuits provide her what little relief she can find, even on holiday. Definitely worth a look.
6 out of 12 people found this helpful.
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Breillat is a film genius.
Added 9/15/2007
Catherine Breillat (1948) is a brilliant French filmmaker, director and novelist. Her films are intended to take us places we've never been before, and usually outside our comfort zones with their depictions of hard sexual truths. As a result, Breillat no stranger to controversy. Although 36 Fillette (1988) is not among my favorite Breillat films (which include Fat Girl - Criterion Collection, Romance, and Brief Crossing (Breve Traversee)) it is nevertheless a worthwhile film (despite the poor film-to-dvd transfer quality).
As a precursor to her later work, Breillat's film confronts issues of sex and violence and contains provocative themes common to all of her later work. 36 Fillette tells the story of Lili (Delphine Zentout), a tempestuous 14-year-old French girl who flirts with one man after the next while vacationing with her family near Biarritz. She has decided it is "miserable" to be a virgin, and believes she is ready now lose her virginity at any risk. Despite her adolescent pout, Lili is depicted as a child in a woman's body, which (as the film's title also suggests) seems to be Breillat's point here: that in matters of sexuality, we are naive children living in adult-sized bodies. Zentout and Jean-Pierre Leaud (Francois Truffaut's Adventures of Antoine Doinel (The 400 Blows / Antoine & Collette / Stolen Kisses / Bed & Board / Love on the Run) - Criterion Collection) bring excellent performances to the film. It would be difficult to find Breillat's intellectualized sexual dialogue happening anywhere else in cinema, and like all of her films, this is a film people should be debating afterwards in cafes, bars, and their bedrooms.
G. Merritt
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Frustrating
Added 8/16/2006
Another frank and earnest film from director Catherine Breillat, who seems to have a knack for inviting controversy. Unlike some other reviewers, I thought this movie seemed very realistic. Many young people are curious about it would be like to have all the advantages of adulthood and are quick to experiment. How easy it is for a young lady, in this case fourteen, to attract an older man for such experimentation. The volunteers are potentially endless. We get a strong sense of the angst she is feeling as she goes through this confusing time as a teenager: still a girl, yet developed physically as a woman. It is not a great film by any means, but I consider it at least good. That is more than I can say for the quality of the DVD, however. As others have commented, it is not widescreen and the transfer appears to be from an old VHS tape. 3 stars for the movie, 1 star for the DVD. (To have an inferior DVD is better than having no DVD, I suppose)
5 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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First off, this little girl is a real bitch. As with most younger people; they want to be grown up before they're actually ready. I don't think it's very close to reality, but it does tell a reasonably interesting story.
I like the director... but compared, this isn't the best work.
0 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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