adolescence

Water Lilies (Naissance des Pieuvres) (2007, Director: Céline Sciamma): I ori­gin­ally wrote about this film way back in August 2007, anti­cip­ating its screening at TIFF. For some reason, I wasn’t able to see it then, so when I saw it in the Cinéfranco lineup, I vowed not to miss it again. And I’m so glad that I didn’t. Céline Sciamma’s dir­ect­orial debut is a deeply affecting and beau­tiful film about adoles­cence: body image, hor­mones, self-esteem, friend­ship, loy­alty, crushes, sexual con­fu­sion, con­formity. Though it’s never “about” any of these, it says a lot about them. But it’s not a film of grand ges­tures. Instead, it’s a very small, very per­sonal film that res­on­ates well beyond its seem­ingly narrow scope.

It’s summer in an unnamed French suburb. Skinny undeveloped tomboy Marie (Pauline Acquart) goes to the local pool to see her chubby friend Anne (Louise Blachère) per­form in a syn­chron­ized swim­ming event. While there, she is mes­mer­ized by the cap­tain of the team, gor­geous blonde Floriane (Adele Haenel). She develops a major crush that becomes an obses­sion, and aban­dons Anne to pursue Floriane. Insinuating her­self into Floriane’s life by doing favours, she is soon able to watch the team prac­tice and even travel to per­form­ances with them. Though it’s obvious that Marie has romantic feel­ings for Floriane, she is unable to say any­thing for fear of rejec­tion. Instead, she lets Floriane use her to sneak out of the house to meet boys, causing Marie no end of anguish. Meanwhile, Anne has fallen hard for one of the boys on the water polo team, even though he’s des­per­ately trying to bed Floriane him­self. Floriane is just enough of a cypher to cause heartache every­where she goes, using her flir­ta­tious­ness as a defence mech­anism to hide her own sexual con­fu­sion and fear. Though this leaves Marie con­fused and heart­broken, she dis­plays a core of tough­ness that will carry her through. Her friend­ship with Anne is also deeper than it first appears, and the two out­siders by the end seem much stronger than the sup­posed “normal” pretty girl.

The set­ting among a team of syn­chron­ized swim­mers is a stroke of genius. Back in the fall, I read a few reviews of the film, and I can’t remember where I read it, but I’m stealing the idea non­ethe­less. A critic stated that syn­chron­ized swim­ming was the per­fect meta­phor for adoles­cence. Smiling and beau­tiful on the sur­face, but under the water, legs churning like mad to stay afloat. I also liked the idea that, like gym­nasts or ballet dan­cers, there is one par­tic­ular body type that is required, and anyone else is rejected. The hair and makeup also make the swim­mers indis­tin­guish­able, since they are all expected to func­tion as part of a greater entity, almost mech­an­ical in its pre­ci­sion. It’s obvious that Marie and Anne don’t fit into this world, but they are mag­net­ic­ally drawn to it anyway. The absence of any adults or any spe­cifics that would place the story into a par­tic­ular time help to rein­force the insu­larity of this time in their lives, and there­fore its intensity.

As I said in my pre­view, the film reminded me a lot of Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love (1998), and there is even a phys­ical resemb­lance between the two female pair­ings. Just as in that film, the dir­ector handles the del­icacy of first love with great sens­it­ivity, and focuses on how the tiniest of actions or ges­tures can have great sig­ni­fic­ance. Sciamma coaxes incred­ibly brave per­form­ances from her three young actors, and the cine­ma­to­graphy rein­forces how beauty is intens­i­fied by vul­ner­ab­ility. Though it’s a hoary old cliché, since this is a first film, there is most def­in­itely a lot of Céline Sciamma’s own exper­i­ence on the screen. I’m des­per­ately hoping she has a lot more to say.

Trailer
Official Site
Interview with dir­ector Céline Sciamma

(9/10)

Tagged as: #cinefranco08, adolescence, coming-of-age, france, homosexuality

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