Nymphets, swimming pools and France doesn’t sound progressive, it sounds tantalizingly voyeuristic in the most conventional way. And the director, Celine Sciamma is banking on that misread to draw the audience into a squirmy uncomfortable place. Because the reality from the girls point of view, as opposed to the fantasy concocted by teenage boys who grow up to become Hollywood big wigs, will make you squirm. Peter Jackson, presumably with some help from his production partner Fran Walsh plus a true story captured the dark side of extreme teenage girldom in the sublime Heavenly Creatures. Water Lilies, although neither as technically accomplished nor as melodramatically horrific, offers up another cooler and supremely artful, insider perspective.

Marie (Pauline Acquari) and Anne (Louise Blachere) are a pair of best friend misfits. Anne is chubby, an awkward standout amongst the tiny synchronized swimming group to which she is somehow attached. She clearly doesn’t know what to do with her massive body that spills outside of the “approriate” teenage girl boundaries. Marie, on the other hand, is the skinny, flat chested one, all gangly legs and arms, trying to find some strength, literally by lifting weights as well as figuratively. These two pal around, harboring, as teenage girls will, separate obsessions.

Anne exposes her naked body to Francois (Warren Jacquin) the teen dream. Marie falls in love with the precociously gorgeous Floriane (Adele Haenel), the star of her synchronized swim team, with her lusciously lithe body and thick blond hair that she also doesn’t really know what to do with.


From these three girls perspective we get to witness the trials of teenage girlhood - the cruelty from peers, unreturned desire, even relentless use and abuse by boys and men. We, the audience get to experience, via Marie, Anne and Floriane, only some of what makes it tough to be a girl.

For a young filmmaker fresh out of film, it’s an extraordinary piece. Ms. Sciamma sets this tale in the suburbs in France, rather than the familiar Eiffel Tower France. So the picture conveys that boring, characterless, suffocating feel that one can experience in just about any place outside of any urban center in America. Yet somehow the European version is more stark - less over the top, less things. It’s as the suburbs are just as ugly as the ancient cities are gorgeous. The visual style of the film is bone, dry, the high contrast photography wringing the eroticism out of the film. There is sexuality but it’s so not sexy. Male coming of age films are all obsessed with the score: with finally getting it off. In the female version, it’s more about trying to exercise some control over this thing everyone wants while also trying to figure out what you want. Needless to say, there are many more film about the former than the latter. And that’s what makes WATER LILLIES, welcome and, no pun intended, refreshing.

Opens May 16 in Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Celine Sciamma; music by Para One; Director of Photography Crystel Fournier; edited by Julien Lacheray; produced by Benedicte Couvreaux and Jerome Dopffer. Released by Koch Lorber Films. Running time: 81 minutes.

With: Pauline Acquart (Marie), Louise Blachere (Anne), Adele Haenel (Floriane) and Warren Jacquin (Francois.)