Review of Fat Girl

Fat Girl (2001)
6/10
interpretation: excellent theme, lackluster presentation
22 February 2002
Warning: Spoilers
spoilers, interpretation:

I really like the ideas behind this movie. First of all there is the traditional view of virginity as sacred. When the guy is trying to have sex with this underage girl in the beginning, we're supposed to feel horrified that she is falling for his obvious lies. No! your virginity is too important! Don't do it! Personally I felt that a bit too much time was spent on this seduction because I'm more inclined towards the modern view that sex is just physical interaction. Luckily, fat girl realizes this. There is nothing sacred about sex itself, it's the emotional bonds related that are important. Hence fat girl realizes there is no substantial difference between anal sex and vaginal sex. Saving yourself, your virginity, by simply having anal sex is just absurd. So fat girl is not going to save her vagina for someone she loves, but her emotional attachment. Skinny girl's anal sex is equated to fat girl's "rape." Both are seen as pseudo-sexuality that must be gone through in order to reach true loving sexuality. Skinny girl may have reached this true sexuality in the future, but abstaining from vaginal sex does nothing to promote this. Fat girl has to lose her virginity in order to reach authentic sex because as a virgin guys cannot get past objectivitifying her as a thing to be conquered. Only after can she have true sex. Skinny girl thinks that anal sex "doesn't count" but really it's the first sexual encounter that doesn't count. So when fat girl embraces her raper and then denies that it was rape, she is personifying this idea. The rape fit in perfectly and was an excellent ending.

So the idea is great, it's just the presentation that gets in the way. The skinny/fat juxtaposition is nice. The literal comparison highlights the sexual differences: Skinny girl's religious views of sex and Fat girl's secular views. So it works when we see so much effort put into stealing Skinny's girls virginity. She is building up the purity of sex for Fat girl to destroy it in the end. Overall I think that the building up is just too drawn out. It takes three fourths of the movie and just gets old. Besides the scene when Fat girl kisses poles in the pool and singing her prophetic songs, there isn't much creativity. There's not much to give interest to the underlying ideas.

Another problem is the Hollywood murder ending. There is no real reason for killing off mother and sister. This was done to put Fat girl in the position to get raped. A more fitting ending would have been for her to sneak out when mother and sister are asleep in order to investigate this trucker. It works because prior when the truck drove by and she saw all the sex items in the window her curiosity was aroused. She should then have gone out and still gotten "raped." This way we stick to the main themes and discard the superfluous melodrama.

So besides a few problems in plot, this was a good movie thematically. It's just the lackluster presentation that made me give it a six. I don't plan on ever seeing this movie again, though I had fun interpreting it.
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