Wonder years

>> Catherine Breillat’s first film, Une Vraie jeune fille, is as sexy (and twisted) as you’d expect

by MATTHEW HAYS

The French government should really decorate Catherine Breillat with a medal for her filmmaking endeavours. Her films are funnier than those of Jerry Lewis. And they’re every bit as unusual and unique as the works of Samuel Beckett, another foreigner the French have decorated.

But there’s little chance of that happening. Breillat is stillregarded as something of a rogue within France, where her sexually risqué feature films have come under virtually constant censorship woes. (Her latest, Fat Girl, met with heckles in France and was subsequently banned in Ontario.) With Une Vraie jeune fille, Montrealers are getting a rare opportunity to see Breillat’s first feature, a film that was promptly banned upon its initial release in France in ’76. (Though Toronto’s Mongrel media has the Canadian rights to distribute the film, it’s highly unlikely it would make it past any censorship board outside of Quebec.)

Though no advocate of censorship, watching this movie, it isn’t hard to see what had the censors’ tits tied up in knots. An extremely frank film about female sexual fantasy, Breillat recounts the story (based on her own novel) of a pubescent girl who’s living at her country home while on a break from boarding school. The girl (played by Charlotte Alexandra, in a stunning performance) is bowling over with teen raging hormones. Faced with the daunting prospects of burgeoning breasts and sexual desires she’s never had to deal with before, Alexandra makes mom uncomfortable by getting too cozy with daddy in his easy chair, while lusting after the hunky ne’er-do-well (Hiram Keller) who works for her father. (Ironically enough, Canada’s kiddie porn law has been in the news this week again; this film clearly tests its boundaries.)

Audiences may well flinch at many of Breillat’s character’s antics and fantasies. A bored and cheeky Alexandra sticks a kitchen utensil up her vagina, seeming to almost hope her parents will notice. She wanders about town, dropping her panties wherever she sees fit. At one point, she dumps them on top of the rotting corpse of a dead dog on the beach, marvelling at how many doggy corpses there are down there. Tied up on the beach, she lies motionless as Keller rips a live worm up in pieces and rubs it into her vagina. This, without a doubt, is the most twisted coming-of-age movie ever made.

Finally, Alexandra’s fantasy and reality worlds merge, and the audience is left pondering where one begins and the other ends. As early as this film is, it’s unmistakably classic Breillat, wherein the director-writer has created a distinct universe of female fantasy. Watch, as Alexandra savours the smell of vomit after throwing up all over herself! See her dad shag a skanky prostitute out in the woods somewhere! See Alexandra French kiss her pet beagle!

This is Breillat’s unique distillation of our world: harsh, erotic, brutal and entirely unapologetic. The auteur may have been young when she made Une Vraie jeune fille, but this is the work of a mature, assured, uncompromising filmmaker. :

Une Vraie jeune fille opens Friday, March 29