Les filles ne savent pas nager

In the end of the twentieth Century, the teenage movie came back into vogue in the landscape of the French cinema, this movie made by Anne-Sophie Birot confirms it and reveals her own approach in the content and form about the difficult condition of being a teenager.

By dividing her movie in 3 chapters, by delaying the meeting between the 2 main characters, Anne Sophie Birot takes the viewer by surprise. In the first 2 parts, the female director takes her time to draw the portrait of her 2 young interprets and to place them in their respective family circles before making them meet. Their families don't belong to the same social level but are eventually similar on one point: they're on the verge of disintegration. First, Gwen whose family background is very modest. She is lovely and by embarking on overnight love affairs, she knows her first sexual excitements. It's for her the sole way to escape from a tense familial cocoon between a lazy and alcoholic father and a mother who does her best to make ends meet. Now about Lise, the big house in which she lives makes us deduce that she belongs to an upper-class category whose climate is hardly better than to Gwen's. The death of her father plunged her whole family in bitterness and sorrow. Her mother, especially seems to break into pieces. So, to escape this dreary universe, Lise, secretly goes by coach to meet her long-time friend...

As soon as the two friends are together for the holidays, the movie seems to go on, at first in this dreamy perspective. But bit by bit, disagreement grows, the tension that reigned in the two families has overwhelmed the two friends. As a result, there's a detachment and a distance from Lise. Anne Sophie Birot proceeds by little touches and with subtlety to let suggest the reasons of this split. Very simply, Lise is jealous of Gwen's beauty. It is the time of first teenage loves. Gwen is pretty, slender and has no trouble seducing boys whereas Lise due to her little attractive physical appearance is completely eclipsed by her friend when it comes to seduction. So, rancor, jealousy even betrayal suffer into her which lead her to nearly separation with her all time confidant and the director isn't afraid to end her work with an abrupt ending which tips it out in blackness making the viewer feel unwell.

Once again, here's a movie which has the merit to show that it is not an easy thing to be in one's teenage years. Furthermore, real love seems to be omitted from the work. For example, Gwen seems to have love affairs with several boys, but it's more a means to assert herself to go away from a ponderous household . And the female director is buoyed up by her two young interprets whose roles seem to fit them like a glove. For the rest, I will retain this irregularity. According to Gwen, Lise is a brilliant student but in the beginning of the film, we learn that she failed at her GCSE. She handed in a blank sheet of paper but we don't know much about what might have explained her behavior. It would have been wiser and more consistent to make her pass her exam so as to solidify her personality and to better prepare the sequel.

"Girls Can't Swim (Les filles ne savent pas nager)" gets a lot right about teens, in a debut by writer/director Anne-Sophie Birot:

The endless summer feeling of life Down the Shore (only here the Shore is at Brittany so there's no Bruce Springsteen music, let alone any beach music).

The implied class tensions between townies and seasonals.

The restless rebellion of adolescence, particularly as bursting sensuality.

The casual back-and-forth between parents and teens as the kids alternate between neediness and independence, complicated by the parents' own financial and relationship problems.

And most particularly the exaggerated passions of teen girl friendship.

But the aimlessness of summer vacation is mimicked too much in the pacing, with an abrupt culmination that's not fair to the characters. I must have missed the explanation for the title.

Clearly Eric Rohmer's "Pauline on the Beach" has haunted today's French women filmmakers as this is the second such movie I've seen in a year that feels like an angry response to that sage putting a teen girl amidst adult sharks, after "Fat Girl (a ma soeur)."

(originally written 5/11/2002)

The pace was slow - but that's fine. Life as a teenager can be slow and drawn out, teenage summers last at least double as long as those in later life. Isild Le Besco as Gwen was superficially transparent, boys, clothes, sunglasses, her friendship with tomboy, Lise; but that was the problem; superficiality. There were no long, lingering, artistic longshots of the resort, beachlife, metaphorical flowers blooming or as in the case of Gwen and Lise's relationship, getting frazelled and decaying in the hot sun. The boys were just adjuncts, there was no character development, because they were given no characters.

The implied sensuality of the two girls' relationship was only hinted at, as was the nature of the relationship of Lise's two sisters, briefly filmed together in the bath, one washing the other's back, possibly a prelude to a more frontal association, sufficient, anyway, for Lise to take her grandmother shopping to avoid any possible embarrassment.

Had the girls changed perceptions, desires and interests during their last summer together been properly depicted, had the boys been human, had there been a little impish humour, this could have been a minor gem, or a gem about two minors. As it is, the acting was proficient (it's amazing Karen Alyx - Lise - was 21 when she played the role, she seemed so much a teen) the direction by Anne-Sophie Birot, adequate, but very much a woman's perspective, including the integrity of the nudity. But the ending was unnecessarily shallow; the girls should have just had a catfight and video'd it for You Tube, that would have been more realistic, although less French. Maybe You Tube wasn't around in the year 2000. It should have been, the film needed it.

This is a typical French coming-of-age movie, which means it differs quite a bit from the Hollywood/American model. First off, like a lot of French movies it is indeed pretty slow at times. While Hollywood movies tend to sacrifice realism for heightened drama, French movies often do the opposite, which isn't necessarily always a bad thing. This movie, however, seems to follow the formula of the infamous contemporary coming-of-age movie "To My Sister" (aka "Fat Girl") by being realistic, albeit slow-going, for most of the running time, but then throwing in shock ending that is as melodramatic (and unbelievable) as anything Hollywood has to offer. The jaw-dropping ending of "To My Sister" might arguably have been a fantasy of the troubled female protagonist, but that isn't the case here, and this climax is indeed pretty borderline risible.

French coming-of-age movies also tend to have much more nudity and somewhat more explicit sexuality than the Hollywood versions, even though the characters (and sometimes the actors) are a little shy of eighteen. This movie is no exception. Interestingly, the younger-looking character here was played by an actress (Karen Alyx ) who was actually in her early twenties, while the more developed-looking character was played by a 17-year-old Isild Lebesco (who even then had a body that would put any adult woman to shame). Both actresses do look kind of normal compared to your typical Hollywood prom queen types, but the much more voluptuous Lebesco has, not surprisingly, has gone on to a much longer career (Hollywood and France are certainly alike in that respect).

It also seems to be a conceit in about every French coming-of-age movie that an adolescent female character will inevitably become involved with an older (in some cases, MUCH older) male. I'm not sure why this is, but I think it has less to do with reality than wish-fulfillment--unlike most Hollywood teen movies, French coming-of-age movies have a substantial adult--and, especially, adult male--audience that this no doubt caters too. Anyway,the basic plot of this movie involves a pair of long-time teenage friends, one of whom, "Gwen" is maturing physically and sexually much faster than her friend. So feeling left out, the other girl, , tries to seduce her friend's father with very disastrous results for all involved. As with "To My Sister", however, this movie was directed by a woman and is told entirely from the perspective of the two young female protagonists (and if this were really a male fantasy, it probably would have been the sexier-looking "Gwen" who was involved in the lolita-esque affair and this affair would probably would have been a lot more consummated than it is here).

None of this is to say that this movie is necessarily bad, but it is certainly very typical of its kind.

Two French girlfriends await their annual get-together at the start of summer vacation. The film is constructed in three parts. It starts with the story of Gwen, a flirtatious and perky blonde. The focus then shifts to Lise, a dark-haired and depressed teen who has just lost her father. The two friends come together in the final part. It's not clear what the point of this movie is. There isn't much of a plot. As the two girls undergo mostly mundane experiences, it makes for rather uninteresting viewing. Something out of the ordinary does happen towards the end, but it is so bizarre that it seems to have been added just to have a big finish.