Water Lilies (2007)

An action-packed slog

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Scrawny Marie (Pauline Acquart) and awkward chubby friend Anne (Louise Blachère) are standard outsiders. It's summer and they hang out at the pool watching the synchronized swimmers. Marie befriends beautiful Floriane (Adèle Haenel) who leads the swim team. Floriane is the subject of much gossip. Marie starts hanging out with Floriane putting pressure on her friendship with Anne. Meanwhile Anne is obsessed with hunky François.It's a story of sexual searching and an awkward coming-of-age. There are a few daring scenes. I love when Marie and Anne have a fight. However the plot feels a bit too slight. It's too quiet and the danger is all internal. I want more conflicts. In the end, some stuff happens but they all end up in the same place.

Teen dramas usually deal with the cruelty of boys; Water Lilies shows that girls can be equally vicious with each other. Fifteen year olds, Anne, the fat and lonely kid is always present, going back to the victim in Lord of the Flies, whose glasses are broken by the sadists he is trapped on an island with. Marie is the one searching for love, and seems to find it with Floriane, the blossoming beauty who looks like trouble from the start.The three first meet at a swimming pool and become involved with a synchronized swim team; thus the title, Water Lilies. The typical adolescent angst follows, with laughter and tears and fights. It is also the story of sexual awakening and discovery, in the typical laid back European fashion. The film could not have been made here in America, with its' uptight views on human sexuality. Nothing groundbreaking occurs, the three girls go through the routine troubles of high school students everywhere. The actresses are good and the script passable, for a rating of 6/10.

As ever the English title misses entirely the dark humour of the original, Naissance des pieuvres (Birth of the octopi). This was a typically French film about burgeoning sexuality in three fifteen year old girls living in a new town just outside Paris. One of the girls has not yet developed so is not yet boy bait; another finds her puppy fat puts boys off, and the third is very attractive and has an undeserved "reputation" which she enjoys but can't handle. The story is told against the backdrop of a synchronised swimming club (no under-arm hair allowed) of which the attractive one is captain. The first girl is friends with the second one, but is beginning to find her boring and is attracted to the captain. At first the captain doesn't want to be bothered, but then becomes friendly, using the girl as a lookout for her assignations which are more innocent than they look. The captain is going around with the swimming club hot boy, after whom "puppy fat" lusts. In this adolescent hothouse, the captain tries and fails to lose her virginity, the hot boy left hot, seeks solace with No Two who is more than happy to oblige, while the first girl is left rather confused. End of story. It was a quiet, understated but intense film about real people, with the underwater shots in the civic swimming pool intended to convey the suppressed emotions of the principal characters. Interestingly, there were almost no adults in the film: the girls are all presumably from stable, middle class homes with caring parents, so there is no need to show them.Some American reviewers have complained that the film is only for those who like to watch pubescent girls in skimpy swimming costumes. Whilst that is a plus point of the film, the comment completely overlooks what is probably not too bad a take on life in les banlieues. It certainly seemed more realistic (and was much better presented) than Thirteen.

Score of 7/10 is for the great sound and cinematography in this movie, and for the casting the three girl leads. I also loved the Parisian suburb settings, which seemed as fresh to this casual viewer as they are in all probability dull and claustrophobic to their actual residents. The floaty and unreal feeling of a summer vacation from school is also nicely evoked. These are all high points in a film which is thematically about the confused and confusing desires and adolescent resentments of young girls on the cusp of sexual ripeness.The unfamiliar milieu of synchronised swimming is used well for the first 30 minutes, as the film introduces intense Marie's head-over-heels infatuation at the sight of a swim-suited blonde Floriane, and then follows her attempts to get closer to the object of her desire by joining the girls team. Marie gets to watch them practice from underwater, holding her breath to see their legs thrashing wildly in unison, and this sequence, followed by her gasping and breathless shower scene immediately afterward are both memorable. Unfortunately, the story becomes something of a 'love' triangle, played out between brooding Marie, lissom and desirable Floriane, and jejune Anne, who is the most introspective but curiously the most interesting character. Good but never exceptional acting from all three young actresses makes the film much more engaging than it has any right to be, as do the scenes of adolescent ennui around the Parisian estate where the girls all live. But the sum of all this is ultimately disappointing and like a few of the previous contributors, I detected in proceedings the hand of the writer / director, reaching for profundity. In telling her story, Sciamma reduces the boys to casual ciphers, inexplicably under-uses all the other girls in the swimming team, and sadly, when Marie breaks her (prodigious) silences, we hear the cynical words of an adult, not those of a confused and inexperienced adolescent.But I would recommend a watch, I just can't promise that your life will be different for doing so.