Crossing Into the Deep End, Where Desire Is Fathomed

The flowers that bloom in the French film “Water Lilies” belong to a familiar cinematic species, the newly sexualized teenage girl. Being French, these teenage girls exhibit some notably different characteristics from their Hollywood counterparts; among other things they don’t text, snap their gum or deliver snappy dialogue like some peewee-league Rosalind Russell. But like most movie teenagers, they also weigh in closer to carefully fabricated adult conceits than to fleshed-out real girls.
The three 15-year-olds at the center of “Water Lilies” certainly belong to recognizably fictional types. There’s Anne (Louise Blachère), the sloppy, fat loner (more gently rounded than truly big), who pals around with Marie (Pauline Acquart), a reedy child-woman who, in turn, only has big hungry eyes for Floriane (Adèle Haenel), a ripe beauty whose suggestive smile portends trouble. The scope of that trouble slowly emerges as the girls circle one another at the local pool — they’re all involved in synchronized swimming, hence the title — at parties and, most provocatively, in one another’s bedrooms. Desire, the writer and director Céline Sciamma suggests, embracing her film’s controlling metaphor rather too enthusiastically, has a way of disrupting the most carefully choreographed life.

Ms. Sciamma sets her story in a generic French suburb at a great psychological remove from the holiday hot spot where Catherine Breillat’s teenagers romp in and out of their clothes in “Fat Girl.” Although Ms. Sciamma explores adolescent sexuality and makes something of an uneasy spectacle of the young flesh at her disposal, she has neither Ms. Breillat’s searching intelligence nor her daring. “Water Lilies” is a nice, watchable, attractive, minor work. What it lacks is a sense of purpose, a commitment not just to its characters but also to its own reason for being. Girls grow up. They fumble in and out of bed, sometimes with one another. They cry. They laugh. They’re unspeakable. And then they’re adults.

“Water Lilies” was an official selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, probably as much for its national provenance as its accomplishments. Ms. Sciamma, who makes her feature debut here, has a fine sense of color and form, and works well with her young cast. She generally puts the camera where it makes sense and avoids any visual fuss, a few underwater shots notwithstanding; and her editing advances rather than impedes the story. The girls are sympathetic, though Ms. Blachère pushes it. Even so, what is most interesting about “Water Lilies” is that Ms. Sciamma appears not to have recognized that she has the makings of a real star in Ms. Haenel, whose shaded performance suggests a more interesting film than this one.