A Real Young Girl

Alice Bonnard is a teenager spending the summer with her parents in the French countryside, bored and resentful of her family and her surroundings. Curious about her own emerging sexuality, she drifts between desire and shame, drawn to a young man, Jim, who works at her father's sawmill. Much of her time is spent alone with her diary and her fantasies, which she mixes with the reality around her, while her parents remain absorbed in troubles of their own.

Catherine Breillat wrote and directed the film, her first, shot in 1976 and set in 1963. It stars Charlotte Alexandra as Alice, with Hiram Keller as Jim, Rita Maiden and Bruno Balp as her parents, Georges Guéret and Shirley Stoler. Its frank treatment of adolescent sexuality made it controversial, and it did not reach cinemas until 2000, so it stands at the start of a career that later continued with 36 Fillette, Perfect Love, Romance, Fat Girl, Anatomy of Hell, Venice 70: Future Reloaded and Last Summer.

On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.3 from around 4,800 votes, and on TMDB 5.2 from about 155 votes, indicating modest and limited audience approval for a film known chiefly for the debate it provoked rather than for broad popularity.