36 fillette

14 year old Lily (Delphine Zentout) is on a camping holiday with her family in the popular resort town of Biarritz. Feeling suffocated, she finds an outlet in going out to the local discos. There she meets 40 year old Maurice (Etienne Chicot), a somewhat lecherous man and perennial skirt chaser on the local scene. An unexpected and unusual bond forms between the two but soon tensions with her family and between the ill-fitting pair flare up.

The controversial Catherine Breillat’s (Romance, A ma soeur!) third feature is a highly accomplished film, which announces the major issues that have come to define her work: nascent female sexuality, the transition during adolescence, the sexual rapport between men and women. Her work as a writer is apparent in the striking insight she provides of her characters, which are given life by the naturalistic performances of a great cast. Zentout and Chicot display a mix of vulgarity and vulnerability which infuses their unlikely relationship with genuine credibility, while a rare post-Truffaut appearance by Jean-Pierre Léaud will not disappoint fans of the legendary actor.

Breillat captures the feel of the holiday period in a way unique to the French, as her film brings to mind Rohmer’s The Green Ray or Maruice Pialat’s A nos amours. Moreover, Breillat expands on another favourite subject of French cinema: sexuality. 36 Fillette is a model of the integrity, perceptiveness and eroticism in which cinema and sex can meet.