Une vraie jeune fille
A Real Young Girl
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
“My name is Alice. Alice Bonnard… my father’s and mother’s last names. I don’t like people.” This is what Alice thinks on the train taking her home for summer vacation at the beginning of A Real Young Girl, Catherine Breillat’s debut. The promise of a monotonous season is only disturbed by the erotic impulses that puberty arouses: as she experiments with her sexuality with objects, liquids and hands, she begins to keep an eye on the handsome Jim, an employee at her father’s carpentry shop, and tries to make peace with her forbidden dreams.
The French director’s debut anticipates all the sensations of her later, far more celebrated titles. In fact, it would be a mistake to mistake A Real Young Girl for a “sexploitation” film like those made in the 1970s: Breillat’s eroticism is rude, lopsided, winks only to mislead, and often invokes disgust because, as Alice herself says, “disgust makes her lucid”. Indeed, the dynamics of gender, the most misogynistic patriarchy and the female desire for self-determination are addressed with brazen and rigorous sincerity.
DIRECTORY
Director, screenwriter, novelist, and actress, she is one of the most original and courageous voices in contemporary French cinema. Originally from Breissuire, in the French province of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, she wrote her first novel in 1968, at the age of 17: L’homme facile. After several appearances in films such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), and while collaborating, between screenplays and editing, with names such as Liliana Cavani, Federico Fellini, Marco Bellocchio and Maurice Pialat, she made her directorial debut with Une vrai jeune fille (1976), which adapted her fourth novel, Le soupirail. After Tapage nocturne (1979) and 36 fillette (1988), the director’s interest in the exploration of sexuality and the relationship between generations is more than clear. This is confirmed by her subsequent films, including Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2000), and Anatomy of Hell(2003), titles presented (and awarded) at festivals such as Rotterdam, Edinburgh, Berlin, and Cannes. Her films have featured important actresses such as Isabelle Huppert, Asia Argento, Yolande Moureau and Amira Casar. In 2012, director Luc Moullet dedicated a documentary to her, Catherine Breillat, la première fois. A multiple nominee for the Palme d’Or at Cannes (with The Last Mistress in 2007 and Last Summer in 2023), she presided over the Locarno jury in 2019.
