Fish wrote: I wish that scene had ended differently.
It's a crucial scene indeed, and breathtakingly cruel; but how could it have ended differently? It would have taken the story somewhere else entirely, no?
Same with the deflowering scene, people say stuff like, "I was so disappointed that Marie didn't kiss Floriane", but how can you kiss someone who isn't giving you the right signals?
Celine S thought long and hard about that scene, apparently, and she has said something like, if there had been a kiss, it would become a love scene, and the dynamic tension of the girls' two utterly different motivations would have been lost.
She has also said something about how she had 'kind of failed' with NdP to hold that balance, that dynamic or dramatic tension, generally; to which I can only respond with,
"I should be such a fucking failure!"
"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize" - Voltaire