Revolving around two members of a high school synchronized swimming team and their
relationship with a petite, peculiar girl, Celine Sciamma's seductive first feature, Wate
r Lilies, unveils its evocative fever-dream in the Parisian suburb of Cergy. At the recent
New Directors/New Films Festival in NY, Sciamma's adolescent enigma was an inarguable
highlight among some very strong competition.
It's after a demonstration of Anne and Floriane's submerged coordination, in a locker
room, that Fran�ois (Warren Jacquin) encounters a completely nude Anne (Louise Blachere).
Anne's frumpy body doesn't excite Fran�ois, but the teenage girl is left exhilarated by
the exhibitionistic thrill anyway. Outside the school, Floriane (Adele Haenel), the
swimming team's enchantress, agrees to allow the skinny, nymph-like Marie (an astounding
Pauline Acquart) into the pool area next time they practice, in exchange for a forthco
ming favor.
The favor asked is to be a lookout of sorts for Floriane as she runs off with Fran�ois.
The beauty's inability to go all-the-way with Fran�ois becomes a point of intrigue
both for herself and Marie, who begins harboring a romance for Floriane. Meanwhile, Anne daydrea
ms of Fran�ois deflowering her, going as far as to stand naked, eyes shut, in the
locker room for the lean stud to discover her again. As Marie's flirtation with Floriane
becomes a mutual affair, the tension between her and the insufferable histrionics of
Anne's crush tighten like a vice, especially when Fran�ois makes a house call to
Anne.
Things get rather randy, but the enticement of Sciamma's film is considerably proper.
At a club, the fumblings of an initial kiss between Floriane and Marie fluidly mutates
into Floriane dancing with an older man. Even later, as Marie gives in to Floriane's pleas
that she deflower her, the entire affair occurs under white bed sheets. Sciamma's
artistry is in the gentle coaxing of adolescent allure while keeping its inherent
mystery intact. Is there a difference between Anne's obsession with Fran�ois and
the emotional entanglement of Marie and Floriane?
Though minor in scope and with few real intricacies, Water Lilies nonetheless keeps the
car running in what is already a banner year for French cinema (its major triumph,
Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, opens on the same day). What makes Lilies s
o entrancing is the way that the taboo of feminine lust isn't pandered to as an oddity
but rather as an all-too-natural efflorescence. Beautifully paced with an eerily-consistent
tone, Sciamma's mixture of hormones, romanticism, and bruised emotions leads to sublime
and strange places unfamiliar to those who follow the straight and narrow and quite
reminiscent to those who still don't have the whole thing figured out.
Aka Naissance des pieuvres.
See Also
