Fat Girl/À ma soeur! (2001) – Catherine Breillat
“When you fall for a boy, you try to pin him down too soon. After three days, he wants to kick his way free and get as far away as he can.”
“Oh, yeah? So let’s see who can pick up a decent boy first. Any boy. Even a fat slob like you.”
“That shows how dumb you are. You’re great physically but once they get to know you, they run a mile. They run before even getting to know you!”
“I’m just too young. They’d be scared to sleep with me.”
“But you reek of loose morals.”
“I don’t sleep around.”
“That’s the only thing you don’t do. You have a weird notion of what ‘not sleeping around’ means.”
“That’s what matters, you know.”
“I don’t think so. If I meet a man I love, I’d want to be broken in. He won’t think my first time counts. The first time should be with nobody. I don’t want a guy bragging he had me first. Guys are all sick.”
[….]
Catherine Breillat’s obsession with the dialectical nature of love and violence could not be better articulated than in the haunting last words echoed by Anaïs:
Police officer: She was in the woods. She says he didn’t rape her.
Anaïs: Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.
Don’t know if you do poetry, Jan, but this post I have printed out for a young friend, who will find it most useful cultural reference. She is a poet who has recently been nominated for the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Prize in Poetry ( 1 of 5 poets nominated) for:
“Home of Sudden Service” poems
Elizabeth Bachinsky
Nightwood Editions http://www.nightwoodeditions.com
The “voice” you have quoted in this blog is one she can really appreciate.
Thanks for posting this!
If I do poetry, it’s this kind of poetry, and as always, I appreciate your appreciation.
A previous piece of ‘poetry’ I did was this juxtapoetry.
Yes… you do poetry, I agree!
BTW, this is off topic, but I have been labouring away on a long blog inspired by the Gwen Stefani video you MADE me see. I’ll post it as soon as it’s semi presentable. I feel like a kid in a cultural studies class at the U,madly trying to find the many threads you list as references to pay attention to and consider. ( At 60 this feels GOOD!)
I really appreciate what you do here!
I am look forward to reading your Stefani post.
Jan