Unrealistic and Unattractive!

I would have to say that my biggest complaint about this film is the lack of subtlety in some of the imagery, clearly it was still too subtle for some.

Out of curiosity, are you a male? I would have to say that I felt this film dealt with its themes exceptionally well, certainly one of the truest movies I have seen dealing with the awakening of female sexuality, and in many ways Breillat's best realised film.

It's interesting to note your previous posts regarding 'Idioterne' and '9 Songs', I find it hard to see why you would consider this movie 'dirty' while defending both of those titles (not that I think they are 'dirty' either). Could you explain further why you thought the movie was 'dirty', was it the unsettling nature of some of the scenes or was it the graphic nudity?

Personally I find the violent content of most mainstream American movies far more 'dirty' than the imagery contained within in this film.

It's a very accurate portrayal of budding female sexuality. Graphic and a little "out there" ~ sure. But very honest all the same. I doubt men would understand.

It may be realistic in the sense that this girl is apparently mentally retarded (or "mentally challenged" I should say). Some of the evidence:
1) She places a spoon in her va-jay-jay while at the dinner table with her parents.
2) She walks around outside in the dirt with her underwear down around her ankles.
3) She barfs all over herself and just leaves her puke-drenched top on and sits at her desk to write.
4) She lifts the toilet seat up and sits on the toilet rim to pee.
5) Every five minutes she has the uncontrollable urge to remove her panties.
6) She finds a dead dog on the beach. What does she do? Why, of course she takes her panties off, places them on the dog's carcass and sits down in the sand.
7) She gets into this ridiculous-looking pink car with the guy. When they stop he gets out and for some reason she puts masking tape all over the windshield.
8) She puts a glass bottle up her butt.
9) She fantasizes about the guy putting worms on her vagina and also of herself crawling around in the sand with feathers stuck up her rear end.

We're also treated to a scene where a chicken has its throat slashed and is eviscerated. I could have done without that scene. Indeed I could have done without this whole gross and boring movie. It is no mystery why this film sat unreleased for 25 years.

If your point of not liking this film is the lack of subtlety, I totally agree with you. The film showcases too much nudity and 'weird acts' and I didn't like it. And no, I'm not lesbian, mind you, even straight women knows how to appreciate films.


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your opinion is completely worthless since you clearly lack the wit to come up with a valid reason why you dislike it. "eww pee"..


on another note, i jacked off furiously to this movie.

Early on in the film I definitely thought it was kind of a shock film made for cheap thrills, in some ways I still kind of do, but somewhere towards the middle it really clicked for me that Breillat was actually going for the whole "young woman coming into adult hood and trying to reconcile herself with a strange new world in which she is a sexual being" kind of thing. She hasn't done the most masterful job of expressing that here but it's a pretty stellar first major effort, and if nothing else it is kind of fun to watch as a shock film for a little bit. I just discovered her earlier this evening and the only other film of her's I've had the pleasure of seeing so far is "36 Fillette" where she seems to be going for a similar theme and executes it much more effectively, in that sense I feel it's the better film but her first effort is by far my favorite, just because the discomfort in A Real Young Girl is so instantaneous and visceral whereas it's more of a slow burn in the other.

The only part where I took Alice to be daydreaming was the worm scene, although looking back I suppose it was quite possible she may have been daydreaming elsewhere, it strikes me as unlikely though, as she's always just on her own any other time she's experimenting and why attribute to fantasy what you can attribute to awkward teen experimentation. Then again that may just speak to how weird I remember being around that age.

I'm really not willing to entertain the notion that Alice is developmentally disabled, a bit crazy perhaps, but only in the sense that a lot of kids are during puberty. The case made there isn't wholly without merit but rather than odd things like enjoying the smell of vomit, sitting in the inner ring of the toilet bowl or dropping her drawers every few minutes being an act of lunacy I prefer to think it's her way of testing new boundaries, trying new things and generally rebelling against the world around her. The vomit bit in particular I think may be the first of several potential hints at masochistic tendencies. I don't think it's really fair to say she's portrayed as having a fetish of any kind, but potential hints are definitely strewn just about everywhere.

I really can't blame people for reacting poorly to A Very Young Girl though, my cultural experience is sadly rather narrow but this seems like exactly the kind of film that's practically designed to piss off American audiences. As in if the average mid-westerner saw this there would be some kind of protestant fatwah placed upon the heads of all involved with it. So for someone seeing it and being just upset enough to proclaim it to be valueless filth without calling for anyone's blood seems like a fairly mild reaction.

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You reckon the vast majority of men aren't fantasising about such things most of the time? That's how I see it: A girl's fantasy as she exploited the fantasies of the male audience, which stands in for men everywhere. Possibly a few women, too, although I don't think they're turned on in the same way. Sure it was dirty! That's what many fantasies are. The very worst thing in the whole movie (for me) was tearing bits off that worm.