‘36 Fillette’ (NR)

"36 Fillette," the new film by the French writer-director Catherine Breillat about a 14-year-old girl's coming of age, allures the viewer with promises of kiddy carnality. What it pretends to be is an examination of a bored, precocious, buxom teen's self-flagellating anxieties over the impending loss of her virginity. What it is is a tease.

It's hard to have kindly feelings for a movie that fails to deliver on something that is morally dubious in the first place and that makes you feel simultaneously sleazy and disappointed. The film's starlet is the feline Delphine Zentout, who was 16 when the movie was shot and was cast for her role as the tempestuous Lili solely on the basis of her ability to pull a loose strand of hair down the middle of her face, lower her chin and stare out seductively from under her brow.

No other talents are required, though, unless you count the ability to fill out a bustier as talent. The movie, which is reputed to be autobiographical, cuts quite an attitude, and Lili's spoiled pout is its badge of honor. It takes its title from a child's dress size, and its point seems to be that Lili is somehow a child in a woman's body. If so, it doesn't make her any less tiresome.

Virtually nothing happens in the film and there's no sensibility to speak of to fill in the vacuum. The action, such as it is, centers on Lili's attempts to seduce -- and terminally frustrate -- a 40ish businessman named Maurice (Etienne Chicot) while she's on vacation with her family near Biarritz. After meeting in a disco, they retire to his hotel room, where she decides that she has changed her mind about sleeping with him. He is, after all, nearly ancient.

This same scenario, or some variation on it, is played out later in a cave at the beach, in a car and in a former girlfriend's apartment. In each instance, Lili manages to satisfy Maurice without surrendering, even though she shows every interest in doing so. This is a movie, made by a woman, that points proudly to the baffling contrariness of women. It would have us believe that the reason Lili, who's already emotionally arid at 14, doesn't sleep with Maurice is that she can't. She just can't.