Fat Girl
Cowboy Booking International | Release Date: October 10, 2001 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
With the pitiless, devastating Fat Girl, Catherine Breillat puts men and women, boys and girls on notice: When fantasy, hypocrisy, and manipulation mix in a wet, sandy place, you dive into sex at your own risk. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
An absolute stunner of a movie. Read full review
90
SalonStephanie Zacharek
It's a lean, mean movie, and not a pretty one, but it leaves no question as to Breillat's angular originality as a filmmaker. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
As fascinating as it is discomfiting and as intelligent as it is primal. From first shot to last, France's foremost bad girl has made an extremely good movie -- and maybe even a great one. Read full review
90
The New York TimesStephen Holden
Much more than a perfectly realized vignette about seduction. It is the latest and most powerful dispatch yet from Ms. Breillat, France's most impassioned correspondent covering the war between the sexes. Read full review
90
VarietyDavid Stratton
Despite the disappointing conclusion, it's hard not to be affected by the film, because of the director's frank approach to her subject and the sheer skill with which she tells her story. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Proves to be a remarkably lean and incisive film about the fateful power of sexuality.
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
It's sensuality with a stinger, and Fat Girl is an adolescent sex drama that takes no prisoners. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
There is a jolting surprise in discovering that this film has free will, and can end as it wants, and that its director can make her point, however brutally. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
The film's concluding sequence is bound to polarize audiences. Read full review
80
New Times (L.A.)Bill Gallo
In the end, leaves you feeling both violated and startlingly informed, as if a mugger had whacked you in a dark alley. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Breillat has made an important, even essential work about the exploitation of young women's sexuality, but is not she complicit as well? Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
This disturbing drama has many telling moments, but it ends with an out-of-the-blue shock episode that raises more questions than it answers. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleCarla Meyer
This is a different kind of girls' movie, and certainly not a pretty one, especially its horrific head-scratcher of an ending. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Characters in Breillat's movies often make sex their god, lose faith in it, then find their lives hollow and grim. Bergman wouldn't have been so concerned with bodily woes, but he'd have understood. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Like "Anais," the only surprises Breillat has in store for us are bad ones. In the willfully perverse final act, she delivers a sadistic blow to the audience -- with a sledgehammer. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderMeredith Brody
The shocking, ambiguous ending might have been better served by the film's original, ambiguous title, "To My Sister." Read full review
63
Boston GlobeJay Carr
Uncompromising and unforgiving, but ultimately more self-destructive than any of its characters. Read full review
63
New York PostJonathan Foreman
So daring and unsparing in its depiction of the psyche and experience of adolescent girls that it's hard to imagine an audience that wouldn't find it deeply provocative despite a slow pace. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
A lovely minor achievement. It would have been major if Breillat had been more expansive with respect to Anaïs instead of contentedly letting her go on about her lumpish ways. Read full review
60
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
The kind of stunning and contentious work of art that will leave a lot of folks speechless. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
A laser-sharp evocation of the tortured ties that bind sisters, who can love and loathe each other simultaneously and inflict lifelong wounds with chilling expertise. Read full review
40
Mr. ShowbizKevin Maynard
It's all well-acted and eerily compelling, but the shocker ending is patently implausible.
33
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
Assails with its in-your-face, repulsively compelling (like a train wreck) brutality. Read full review
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