FILMS/
WATER LILIES
Naissance des pieuvres
New Directors
France, 2007, 85 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sat, Apr 26 / 9:00 / Kabuki / WATE26K
Mon, May 5 / 1:30 / Kabuki / WATE05K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Céline Sciamma
- prod
-
Bénédicte Couvreur, Jérôme Dopffer
- scr
-
Céline Sciamma
- cam
-
Crystel Fournier
- editor
-
Julien Lacheray
- mus
-
Para One
- cast
-
Pauline Acquart, Louise Blachère, Adèle Haenel, Warren Jacquin
- source
-
Koch Lorber Films, 22 Harbor Park Dr, Pt Washington, NY 11050. FAX: 516-484-4588. EMAIL: suzanne.fedak@kochent.com
Leave it to the French to eschew the clichés of American “coming of age” dramedies, preferring instead to chart their tweens’ trials and triumphs through uniquely Gallic “age of possibilities” films, highlighted by such disparate studies as François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (SFIFF 1973), Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl and Pascale Ferran’s genre-defining The Age of Possibilities (SFIFF 1997). To this list we must add Céline Sciamma’s astonishingly assured first feature, focusing on three schoolgirls of varying experience and élan who explore the alternately liberating and perilous possibilities inherent to their youth, burgeoning sexuality and fascination with synchronized swimming. Imagine a pubescent Esther Williams shipped overseas to a public school in the suburbs outside Paris, and you’ll have some idea of the alluring blend of teenage athleticism and ennui embodied by Marie (preternaturally perceptive lovestruck loner), Anne (zaftig party-crashing eccentric) and Floriane (sultry swim team tease), the titular water lilies who dive deep into the chilly waters of adolescence with only nose plugs, training bras and each other’s kisses and confessions for protection. Swimming through the chlorine-scented uncertainty of budding bodies and same-sex crushes, the girls move underwater with the military precision their sport demands, and ultimately prove equally fluid in defining selfhood and sensuality (a strong scene recalls Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know (SFIFF 2005) in its simultaneously matter-of-fact and near-mythic depiction of childhood sexuality). Sciamma elicits remarkably brave performances from her young cast, and her sure sense of tone and tempo signals the emergence of an exciting new filmmaker whose own age of possibilities is just beginning.
—Steven Jenkins
Presented in association with Frameline. Sponsored by TV5Monde, French Cultural Services, French-American Cultural Society and Air France.
