Ontarians will finally have the opportunity to watch Fat Girl, the controversial French film that most of the rest of Canada had a chance to see more than a year ago.
Yesterday, the film's co-distributor, Cowboy Pictures of New York, announced that the Ontario government has lifted the ban it applied in fall, 2001, on Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl (A ma soeur!). The government had been facing a court action over the ban that, if heard, would have contested the constitutionality of the Ontario Film Review Board.
Fat Girl will now carry an "R" rating and its 93 minutes will be shown uncut Ontario theatres, beginning with a run in Toronto starting Feb. 21. The film was given a theatrical release in British Columbia, the Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec.
The Ontario Film Review Board initiated the ban in November, 2001, because of its vivid depictions of sexual activity involving minors, in this instance, a 15-year-old girl played by Roxane Mesquida, and her 12-year-old sister (Anaïs Reboux). Cowboy Pictures and its Canadian partner, Lions Gate Films, eventually appealed the decision to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. They argued the board had erred in its application of the criteria available to it under the Ontario Theatres Act, and by banning Fat Girl had overstepped its powers and jurisdiction and violated the Charter right to freedom of expression.
Discussions between lawyers for Fat Girl's distributors and Ontario's ministries of the Attorney General and Consumer and Business Services have been continuing since the fall to try to resolve the situation before going to court. A hearing had, in fact, been set for Jan. 17, then moved to February. These discussions became more viable, some have suggested, once Robert Warren, the veteran head of the Ontario Film Review Board, announced his retirement "for personal reasons" in November.
Craig Martin, lawyer for the distributors, said the government departments agreed to have Fat Girl resubmitted and approved for screening unedited now because they didn't wish to get into a constitutional fight over the powers of the board. They "knew they were going to lose on the administrative law question," he said, because clearly "artistic merit" was a factor that had been insufficiently considered in the OFRB's initial deliberations.
At the same time, he expressed disappointment that the constitutionality of film boards has, once again, escaped a challenge before the courts. "We need to ask why it is that we have legislation that confers on a board of part-time employees with no particular expertise, the power to ban films in the province."
Under the current legislation, "the constitutional question is never going to get before the courts," Martin said, because "you're never going to get the right case before the court." Films such as Fat Girl are always going to have "merits" that will derail their standing as constitutional test cases.