Review of Water Lilies

You won't find any picketing granola dykes in Water Lilies, nor will you find any suicidal pseudo-poets, snappy repartee, or any of the other dull tropes often associated with lesbian movies. Water Lilies is not about being gay. It is about being in love. Moreover, it possesses the two qualities I want most in a love story, two qualities usually overlooked, or, more likely, dismissed in other lesbian films: passion and ambiguity.

The actors are wonderful to look at, in that pouty French way. Main character Marie sulks but does not shrink, developing slowly though a series of longing stares and laconic self-expression. Florianne, the object of Marie's largely unclassifiable desire, plays the beautiful alpha female. One of the more complex teenage characters I've seen, she has a preternatural understanding of seduction and social dominance, but lacks basic self-awareness. For her, reputation is paramount, although she doesn't crave popularity. While she might have once wanted the girls on the synchronized swim team to like her, she now wants them to fear her. She also absolutely brutalizes the camera with her eyes.

I love that this film portrays 15-year-olds actually acting like 15-year-olds. They do things without understanding why, they sacrifice their self-esteem in ways that no broken-in adult would, all for the mere whispered possibility of requited love. They get bored. They end and re-form friendships within a matter of days.

Director Celine Sciamma resists didactic conventions. By the film's end, you will likely be as unsure of Florianne's sexuality or Marie's exact motivations as are Florianne and Marie themselves. You leave not having tucked away into your memory a trite lesson--the general contents of which you already understood before having even watched the movie--but instead speculating about unanswered questions, in much the same way Water Lilies' characters are forced to.

Rounding out the impressive performances and stunning imagery is a beautiful soundtrack, so bucolic and delicate it seems to embody adolescence itself. Relatively unknown French act Para One provides the score, with a style reminiscent of Boards of Canada and Ulrich Schnauss. Deserving special mention is the addition of an early 90s club hit by Jones & Stephenson, titled "The First Rebirth". I'm not sure if its presence in the film should be credited to Sciamma, Para One, or someone else entirely. Whatever the case, it's brilliant; obscure enough to seem timeless, and, even better, perfectly suited to Water Lilies' climactic club scene.

View the trailer here.

Final Analysis: 8.5/10
Released on DVD September 2nd

head music + body music = Instant Funk

I didn't make much headway in Peter Shapiro's Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. Nonfiction generally bores me, even when it concerns a subject in which I'm interested but, besides that, I found Shapiro's journalism a little thick and frenetic. One idea I did take away from the book with much relish, however, was Shapiro's assertion that disco marked a shift from the head music of the 1960's --psychedelia, antiwar folk, and envelope-pushing rock--to the body music of the 1970s, music that worshipped bass lines and repetitive keyboard hooks. The culture had changed (from involvement to escapism), the drugs had changed (from hallucinogens to stimulants), and the music necessarily had to evolve as well. I'm young enough and possess taste eclectic enough to appreciate both styles of music. The song I review this week--the extended version of Instant Funk's I Got My Mind Made Up--engages me so much because in it, one can hear the fusion of the two.

First thing's first: this is a hardcore, straight-ahead American disco song, disco tinged with psychedelia, not the other way around. You'll not find this on any diehard hippie's playlist. But listen to the squelchy, wandering, synthy solo between 2:05-2:55 and just try not to describe it as "trippy" (a term I'm fairly certain seemed quaintly anachronistic a mere decade after its '60s coinage). I swear, the second thing I thought while listening to it--the first being, HOLY SHIT, this sounds good!--was that it sounded a lot like the long, instrumental segments of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.

What amazes me about this is that it allows me to actually hear the evolution of disco and the disco party. Larry Levan was known for spinning this song at the legendary Paradise Garage: a funkier, seedier, more inclusive counterpoint to Studio 54. It's no secret that Levan was heavily influenced by the Loft parties of David Mancuso, a disc jockey only in the strictest sense of the term who paid no heed to genres and played music not only from War and Loose Joints, but from Santana and the Steve Miller Band as well. In "I Got My Mind Made Up", one can effectively witness the changing of the guard; one can almost see Levan just soaking it all up and, later, showcasing a beautifully welded musical suture.

Eating My Words (ft. Lil Wayne)

Damn. Just weeks after the album's release, mere days since I'd denounced his reputation as undeserved, Lil Wayne's "A Milli" has ensnared me almost beyond explanation. Initially dismissed as a guilty, ephemeral pleasure, it's become a staple on my playlist. And I've given in to the enjoyment it brings me--most often manifested in drunken bedroom dances that look a lot like the the "Get Silly" video--because I don't ever want to fear the the things I like.

Naturally, though, I wonder why I like "A Milli" as much as I do. The beat is almost identical to the one in Snoop's "Drop It Like It's Hot", but with a deeper, more primal bass ideal for driving dance floors. Most integral to the song's catchiness, though, is Lil Wayne's rapping, which reminds hip-hop fans of how much fun it is to hear the poetic and perverse successfully blended. In other words--unlike bloated Kanye--Lil Wayne straight crushes the art of idiosyncratic lyricism. Observe:

Damn I hate a shy bitch/Don't you hate a shy bitch/Yeah I ate a shy bitch/She ain't shy no more, she changed her name to My Bitch

Rife with other weird gems like,

I'm a millionaire/tougher than Nigerian hair,

and

You like a bitch with no ass/you ain't got shit,



"A Milli" has convinced me to give Lil Wayne more credit (though I still, for the life of me, can't understand why everyone loves "Lollipop" so much).