36 fillette

After a nine-year absence from the director’s chair, Catherine Breillat returned with 36 FILLETTE, having lost none of her power to push both boundaries and buttons. Delphine Zentout plays Lili, a precocious fourteen-year-old girl on a seaside family vacation. Drawn to a bitter middle-aged man (Étienne Chicot), Lili longs to lose her virginity and initiates a contest of wills in which she discovers herself more mature than, but still rattled by the equivocations of, her chauvinistic counterpart. Fueled by an extraordinary performance by then-sixteen-year-old Zentout, and featuring a scene-stealing Jean-Pierre Léaud as Lili’s brief confidant, 36 FILLETTE showcases Breillat as an incisive chronicler of the subtle evolutions of teenage desire.