Delphine Zentout in 36 Fillette |
Cast: Delphine Zentout, Etienne Chicot, Olivier Parnière, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Berta Dominguez D., Jean-François Stévenin, Diane Bellego, Adrienne Bonnet. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, Roger Salloch, based on a novel by Breillat. Cinematography: Laurent Dailland. Production design: Olivier Paultre. Film editing: Yann Dedet. Music: Maxime Schmitt.
Catherine Breillat's explorations of adolescent female sexuality continue in 36 Fillette. (The title refers to a French dress size in the "Junior" range.) The protagonist, Lili (Delphine Zentout), is 14 years old and precocious both mentally and physically, but perhaps not emotionally. She's visiting Biarritz with her mother (Adrienne Bonnet) and father (Jean-François Stévenin) and her 17-year-old brother, Bertrand, (Olivier Parnière). One evening, she wheedles her self-absorbed parents into letting her accompany her brother on a nighttime excursion into the clubs at Biarritz, and they hitch a ride with a 40-something businessman named Maurice (Etienne Chicot), who has a couple of Bertrand's acquaintances in his car. Eventually, Lili and Bertrand go their separate ways, and in the course of her explorations Lili encounters a local celebrity, Boris Golovine -- an extended cameo by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who got his start in movies playing a disaffected adolescent in The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959). They strike up a conversation which provides the bulk of exposition for Lili's character. Then she re-connects with Bertrand and Etienne, and goes off with the latter for an evening of sexual and emotional exploration in which it becomes apparent that Lili is in many ways the more mature person of the two -- though perhaps not enough to justify such an exploitative relationship. In the French manner, the film is too talkative to be shocking, but Breillat is really not out to shock audiences so much as make them question their own reactions to such a pairing. Zentout, who was 16 at the time, gives an astonishing performance, though I find myself queasy at the thought of so young an actress playing such a role.