A Real Young Girl (1976) – Catherine Breillat.

'Disgust makes me lucid!'

The 1^st film from gifted auteur Breillat unflinchingly presents us with the deliciously twisted adolescence of anguished, increasingly exploratory teen Alice (Charlotte Alexandra), and her beautifully bizarre series of not altogether harmonious sexual awakenings. At home for the summer holidays, Alice soon finds the banal domesticity oppressive, becoming listless, adrift, morose, and increasingly carnal. I still find the bracing A Real Young Girl to be fresh, vital, and utterly compelling. Sadly, it is still not all that common to enjoy an insightful feature written and directed by a woman, about such a uniquely fascinating protagonist, giving one the distinct privilege of witnessing the singular interior world of a precociously voluptuous young woman, not so much as burgeoning into adulthood, but erupting with a Vesuvius-like intensity! While there is little wrong with a film remaining emblematic of the period it was shot in, Breillat's vibrant, sultry, surrealistic reverie A Real Young Girl remains remarkably lucid, angsty, probing, and thrillingly alive, certainly no less so than the exquisite teen temptress Alice, her hungry peek through the looking glass proves far raunchier than one might expect.