A Real Young Girl
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Breillat's films and novels are often about the "...erotic and emotional lives of young women, as told from the woman's perspective," typically using "...blunt language and open depiction of sexual subject matter." Many of Breillat's films and novels, including A Real Young Girl have led to controversy and hostile press coverage. For example, Breillat's film 36 Fillette, about the "... burgeoning sexuality of a 14-year-old girl, and a middle-aged man intent on seducing her" led to "storms of controversy."
Plot
The film shows several months of the life of Alice, a 14-year old girl attending a boarding school in France. While at the boarding school, Alice finds herself becoming increasingly withdrawn and preoccupied with her awareness of her body's changes. When she returns to her parents' country home to spend the summer vacation with them, her sense of being disconnected and alienated increases even more. All around her in her bedroom are the trappings of her former self, of her childhood, and yet she is becoming increasingly aware of sexual thoughts and preoccupations.
Alice's father manages a sawmill and the mother works as a housewife, carefully managing the family budget. While Alice is spending days with her mother, she helps the mother cook and clean and listens to her mother's complaints about her life. After tiring of the domestic routine of meals and chores, Alice begins escaping through daydreams and erotic thoughts, which she captures in her diary. Later, unbeknownst to her parents, Alice begins taking bike trips into the nearby town, where she loiters in bars, watches young men, and flirts with them. As well, Alice goes to her father's sawmill, where she becomes infatuated with Jim, a sawmill worker in his mid-20s.
When Alice's parents discover that she has been riding into town, they are upset, as they fear that she may be vulnerable to the attentions of the more experienced young men in town, and her bike trips are curtailed. However, even on foot, Alice is still able to wander to the sawmill, where she catches Jim's attention with her provocative flirtations. As Alice is going through the turbulent emotions of her first sexual experiences, coincidentally, her parents' relationship begins to unravel, after Alice's mother confronts the father about his many infidelities.