Synopsis
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
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Cast
- Pauline AcquartMarie
- Adèle HaenelFloriane
- Louise BlachèreAnne
- Warren JacquinFrançois
- Christel BarasInspector
- Marie Gili-PierreCashier
- Alice de LencquesaingLocker Room Girl
- Claire PierratLocker Room Girl
- Barbara RenardNatacha
- Esther SironneauSaleswoman
Recommendations
- 75
TV Guide Magazine
Though the material is familiar, Sciamma has a light touch and avoids many teen-movie cliches. - 75
San Francisco Chronicle
Everything in Water Lilies is more guarded, more complex and far more interesting than it seems. - 70
Variety
The painfully spot-on essence of teen angst meets the spirit of Esther Williams in Water Lilies. First film by gifted scripter-helmer Celine Sciamma nails the aching doubts and offhanded cruelty of 15- and 16-year-old girls. - 70
Village Voice
French director Céline Sciamma doesn't quite have the stun of discovery--mortified adolescent sexuality is something of a national specialty, after all--but she inexhaustibly endeavors after the indelible image. - 70
Salon
Dismissed in some quarters as trash because it depicts a sexual act (of sorts) between two teenage girls, Water Lilies struck me instead as a hypnotic and wholly convincing look at teen culture from the inside, with all its courage, cruelty and unspoken codes of silence intact. - 70
Los Angeles Times
The elegant Water Lilies is not about answers but about discovery of self and of others in all its pain and pleasure. - 63
New York Post
Though Water Lilies endlessly teases the audience with its sapphic subtext and young female flesh, Sciamma seems most interested in showing how extremely cruel adolescent girls can be to each other. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
Although a little too open-ended to be wholly satisfying, Water Lilies is still an excellent directorial debut.
