Themes: Sexual Awakening, Innocence Lost, Family Vacations
Main Cast: Delphine Zentout, Etienne Chicot, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Oliver Parniere, Jean-François Stévenin, Berta D. Dominguez
Release Year: 1988
Country: FR
Run Time: 88 minutes
Plot
Titled after the name of a little girl's dress size, the coming-of-age drama 36 Fillette follows a couple days in the life of 14-year-old Lili (Delphine Zentout), whose physically mature features contrast with her immature adolescent angst. Away from her home in Paris, she is painfully bored during a summer vacation in a windy little campground near the resort town of Biarritz. She's stuck with her emotionally unavailable parents (Adrienne Bonnet and Jean-Francois Stevenin) and older brother J.P. (Stephane Moquet). After some blatant begging on her part, J.P. eventually agrees to take her out to a disco. They don't have a car, so they hitch a ride from the middle-aged Maurice (Etienne Chicot), who is out cruising in his sports car. Maurice and J.P. go to a disco, but Lili is too young to get in. She spends the evening at a café talking to the celebrity musician Boris Golovine (Jean-Pierre Leaud), but she agrees to meet Maurice for a date at midnight. After much pleading with the doorman, Lili is allowed in to the disco where she dances with Maurice. Eventually, she leaves the club with him and spends the evening in his fancy hotel room. 36 Fillette was written and directed by Catherine Brelliat, who adapted the screenplay from her own semi-autobiographical novel. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
After almost a decade of working as a screenwriter, Catherine Breillat returned to directing for the controversial drama 36 Fillette. Criticized for supposedly portraying indecent adolescent sexuality, the story actually focuses on a realistically bratty teenage girl. The complex character of Lili is convincingly played by Delphine Zentout as a rude, confused, and utterly defiant youth. Admittedly, this doesn't make for a very entertaining or contemplative film, but rather one that truthfully exposes the brutal emotional turns of a young girl's awakening sexuality. It works against unnecessary squeamishness because Lili displays a callous, defiant attitude and total ownership of her hyper-feminine body, while at the same time she's completely at a loss of what to do next. In her scene with the musician Boris (Jean-Pierre Leaud, who himself played the defiant youth in The 400 Blows), she reveals a cocky awareness that attempts to hide her inexperienced naïveté. However, the real power struggle comes out in the hotel scene with middle-aged Maurice (Etienne Chicot), where she constantly deviates between total repulsion and a desperate search for thrills. Unfortunately, the ending does become tedious as the characters start talking in circles and nothing much happens, while Maurice reveals himself to be nothing more than a stereotype. Appreciated only by audiences who admire brutal honesty over story line, 36 Fillette is still an achievement for Catherine Breillat, who elaborates on this subject matter in her later work. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
36 Fillette is a 1988French film starring Delphine Zentout and Oliver Parniere, directed by Catherine Breillat. It is the story of a sexually-curious and rebellious 14-year-old (played by 14-year-old Zentout) who has an emotionally-charged and dually-manipulative relationship with an older man.
