I've enjoyed this picture because of the fine acting. For the main part it seems to be a family drama ,with some ironic touches,about the rivalry between two sisters , The oldest is fifteen and very attractive, the younger one is overweight and desperate to find ways to challenge her sister. There is rivalry concerning boys, but also concerning the attention of the parents. Nothing prepares you for the brutal last fifteen minutes of the otherwise slow moving story : a stranger attacks the mother and the older sister in their car, murders them, then takes the younger one into the woods and rapes her. The girl seems to undergo this ordeal in a docile way. Yet it is clear that we are watching murder and rape.The viewer is shocked and unprepared for this event : why is she reacting that way?Why does she declare to the police that it wasn't rape? But then one thinks back at the scenes where the older girl is seduced by her lover, in front of her sister who supposedly is sleeping...The young man persistently talks to the girl in his arms about love until she gives in to have sex with him, very reluctantly and crying.Is that what gives the other sister her ideas about love? That love and sex are undeniably linked with violence and pain? Breillat makes films about women and girls, and the way they react to the world : the men are merely there to make her (ambiguous) point.
