The Ontario Film Review Board has refused for a second time to release the French feature film Fat Girl ( A ma soeur!).
A second panel of viewers saw the film yesterday morning and endorsed the opinion of the original review panel last week that the film contravenes the Ontario Theatres Act provisions regarding sexual activity on-screen.
"The panel has asked for several scenes to be cut," said OFRB director Robert Warren. "One scene in particular concerned them, where there's a 15-year-old person showing full frontal nudity in a sexual situation, with a 13-year-old looking on." Noah Cowan of Fat Girl's North American distributors, Cowboy Booking, says that this scene is "the centre of the film, which critics around the world have called a masterpiece."
Warren said that review board was also concerned about two other scenes. In one of them, the 13-year-old girl looks at her breasts in a mirror. In the other, her breasts are shown again in what Warren describes as "a fairly brutal rape scene."
Cowan responds that this is a "very important art film, which it looks like the people of Ontario won't see. All they've told us is that they won't release the film as it is, or with cuts that would leave about 40 minutes of the movie."
Cowan points out that the film, directed by Catherine Breillat, is about the sexuality of young females, which would seem to put most of the film in conflict with Ontario's Theatres Act.
The film was screened at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.