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
