À ma soeur!

What a remarkable film. Anaïs, 12 is the younger, overweight sister to the more conventionally attractive Elena, 15. Left to themselves by their disinterested parents on a holiday in the South of France (the dad leaves to go back to his business very early on, and the mother does nothing but sunbathe, shop and garden), Elena hooks up with an older Italian lothario, while Anaïs has to pass the time on her own as she waits for her sister. It's a very honest and painful film. Both sisters are going through hell, the kind of secret hell that teenagers do, when they enter into an adult world and attempt to behave in the way they think adults do. Elena doesn't want to have sex with Fernando, but is persuaded into anal sex as it's a way to show her love to him. Anaïs doesn't want to have to listen to them, but has to as she's in the same room. Her tears from the position she's been put in, and from the empathy she feels for her sister (their bonds openly acknowledged in the previous scene) make this sex scene very unerotic. Fernando's groans of pleasure are very one-sided.

There is really only one scene between Elena and Fernando that Anaïs is not a part of. This is important as it shows how Elena switches roles with Fernando, going down on him, promising to sleep with him when they next meet. He has to stop her and she knows it. Anaïs, not hearing this, only ever has the understanding that Elena is the one protesting she does not want sex. What does this mean? It means that Anaïs' empathies for Elena may be understood by her as a more subjective response. As is so frequently the case in looking at these films, the one scene that is included is the one that seems the most innocuous. In this case, it's the scene by the gate.

http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/cteq/a-ma-soeur/

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/dec/07/1