Fat Girl (film) Letter to E. 2001

The ending: it was brutal but belonged to the worldview of the director who has a bleak opinion about men. There were 3 men in the film. The father: a workaholic who may not only have been working back in Paris (that's an obvious story) and who did not seem particularlyclose to his wife; certainly he had no idea about his daughters, the younger being neglected and disturbed, her only carer her sister; the boyfriend, who was Don Giovanni personified (and a thief and liar) and, finally, the rapist, the complete animal.
Along with that there is the fat girl, who had decided (precocious aged 12), to lose her virginity to someone she wasn't going to care about (and that too was taken to its logical conclusion). She had been, in the family and in her little social life, utterly humiliated, to the point of living through her own sister's deflowering like a dog (she lay in bad crying). No one respected her or wanted her. But at the end, here came an animal who seemed to her to choose her; he killed her glamourous mother, her desirable sister, and she knew he would rape her so that she would lose her virginity, defiantly, as she showed by her last retort to the police (that he hadn't raped her but that if they didn't believe her they could find out for themselves).
So that's why the ending was as it was. It was more than a study of a sad little girl growing up, it was an atrocious statement about men and the society they have created. You could see that from the mother. She kept herself nicely in her house, obviously more interested in looking attractive (which would be for men) whilst having no idea what was happening even with the daughter she identified with. She was a slut though, viz the way she threw the bottle out of the car window. It was an angry act not only of frustration and fatigue but as a furious protest, using the sexual symbol of the empty bottle in front of her own daughters, at society. (She never even went into her daughters' room to say goodnight. Did she know her daughter was sleeping with the boy? She must have, as her daughter observed to her that she must have lost her virginity once herself and she didn't answer. It was a taboo subject). And what did she threaten the girl with during that dreadful drive home? 'Your father is going to have you examined!' The girl was scared. Not because, on the surface, it could have been for AIDS for instance, but because the Father was Bogeyman. The old fashioned image of Father, an authoritarian man. No sympathy. G. thought the policemen were particulary unsympathetic too, but I didn't notice that.
Well, I didn't mean to write so much, but here it is I guess while fresh in my mind.
I really didn't enjoy watching it, the affect though was powerful.

Linda