Vivante (2002)
58KVivante: Directed by Sandrine Ray. With Vahina Giocante, Samuel Jouy, François Berléand, Fanny Cottençon. After a brutal attack, a 19-year-old girl falls into a self-destructive cycle.
“I saw this on the EuropaEuropa station, and like a lot of the films on that station it kind of has the feel of a TV movie, but with full-frontal nudity (itu0026#39;s French after all). A young college student with a bright future is brutally raped one night by a stranger. She doesnu0026#39;t tell anybody, but quickly sinks into a self-destructive bout of drinking, drugs, and promiscuous sex. This is kind of realistic I guess–thereu0026#39;s a phenomenon where rape victims will often engage in consensual sex right afterwards, which in America anyway is sometimes used against them in court as evidence that they werenu0026#39;t really raped. I suppose women might find this movie pretty empowering.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne thing that bothered me personally though: the lead actress Vahina Giocante (odd name there)really has a great body, and while there is nothing at all erotic about the brutal rape scene, the subsequent sex scenes or the long scenes of her brooding in the bathtub are a different story. I think half the audience (i.e. men) might have a slightly different reaction to this movie than what was perhaps intended. In that respect, this kind of reminded me of two other recent French movies (which I probably also saw on EuropaEuropa), Catherine Breillatu0026#39;s u0026quot;Romanceu0026quot;, which was half tedious feminist diatribe and half really hot sex, and u0026quot;Bad Companyu0026quot;, which was kind of strange combination of an alarmist American TV movie about teenage girls and oral sex mixed with the traditional French penchant for borderline pedophilia. I liked this better than those two, but I canu0026#39;t help thinking that this kind French feminism and softcore sex is sort of at cross-purposes with itself. But then, maybe Iu0026#39;m just unsophisticated American, all the time I spend watching EuropaEuropa notwithstanding.”
