The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“An auspicious screen debut … For all its perversity, A Real Young Girl stands as one of Breillat’s most amusing works.”

Maria San Filippo, Senses of Cinema

Catherine Breillat’s ribald first feature, completed in 1976 but shelved by its cold-footed financier, pulls zero punches in its forthright and salaciously surreal portrayal of an adolescent girl’s fledgling sexuality. Adapting her own autobiographical 1974 novel Le soupirail (The Opening), the controversial author transposes that same transgressiveness that barbwires her prose to this portrait of 14-year-old Alice (Charlotte Alexandra) and the strange, libidinous world she inhabits as a girl acutely aware of her hypersexualization. Returning home to her drowsy provincial village for the summer, she combats boredom by seducing the hunky new hire at her father’s sawmill. The film’s blunt nudity and confrontational handling of sex—here an abstract and often abject concept—saw the film withheld from distribution for fear of being levied with a newly imposed X‑rating tax in France. Its belated release in 1999 was triggered by the succès de scandale of Romance, Breillat’s breakout sixth feature.

In French with English subtitles

“One of the boldest explorations of female sexuality ever committed to celluloid.”

Janus Films

“A surreal voyage into adolescent sexuality … Crude, unpolished, yet curiously dreamy.”

A.O. Scott, The New York Times