WATER LILIES (Naissance des pieuvres

Koch Lorber Films
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Directed by: Celine Sciamma
Written By: Celine Sciamma
Cast: Pauline Acquart, Louise Blachere, Adele Haenel
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/19/08
Opens: April 4, 2008

Girls just wanna have fun. What better time to enjoy life than when you’re at your physical peak? The trouble is that a 15-year-old has not developed her full brainpower yet: that comes when you’re about twenty-five. As a result, adolescents perceive disappointments as the end of the world, are awkward in social situations, and in the absence of parental guidance (which they may not seek), teens are bound to be uncertain about everything. With the film “Water Lilies,” whose French title, “Naissance des Pieuvres” means “Birth of octopuses,” writer-director Celine Sciamma looks particularly at one trio of 15-year-olds from what she calls a distinctly feminine point of view. What makes this movie different from most others about that age-group is that no parents are present. The kids are essentially unsupervised, though this is no “Lord-of-the-Flies” kind of story. Whatever cruelty exists is verbal, though in one case, the violence takes the form of simply dropping a small ball of spit into a boy’s mouth. (He deserved it.)

The story is bound to remind viewers over a certain age of the career of Esther Williams, a teen swimming champ who made an acting debut with an MGM Andy Hardy movie. The Paris suburb of Cergy has a municipal swimming pool where a girls’ balletic team deliver performances in regional competitions for an appreciative crowd. Floriane (Adele Haenel), Marie (Pauline Acquart), and Anne (Louise Blachere) hang out together, the good-looking Floriane and the chubby Anne as part of the swimming team while Marie, perhaps too small for the water ballets, serves as a hanger-on. Anne likes a 16-year-old boy, Francois (Warren Jacqain) while Francois, understandably, prefers the pretty blond, Floriane.

In a switch from the time that I was a teen during the 1950’s, virginity in a girl now appears to be considered a handicap. Boys must think that girls not de-flowered by age 15 are losers, prompting Floriane, who brags that she has sex with many boys while in truth she is a virgin, has arranged a date with Francois and has a plan to make Francois thinks she is experienced. Ah, to be an adolescent male in our present century!

In the same way that adults are out of the picture throughout the film, so boys are strictly secondary to the plot—though they do act stupidly in one scene, parading around a locker room with girls’ panties on their heads. All audience eyes and ears. then, are on the negotiations made among the three girls, each one able to help the other two in distinct ways. This may be a chick-flick, but men would be wise to watch the film as a guide to what those of the opposite sex are thinking when they are with one another.

Lenser Crystel Fournier captures some good underwater shots, particularly one in which a swimming team, practicing their ballet, move their legs in synch as though they were one active octopus. “Water Lilies” is obviously a work of a female writer-director, the picture serving as evidence that a woman at the helm of a movie that is almost exclusively about girls can deliver more insight about her own gender than a man.

Not Rated. 85 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online