Water lilies begin
with girls in a dressing room at the bathhouse.
They put on make-up and get ready for a show in art swimming.
Marie is also sitting in the stands, reluctantly there to watch her friend participate in the show.
Marie has a bored teenager's stone face, but is taken to bed by the art swimmers.
And above all, team captain Floriane.
Sciamma's debut film gossips a lot about what would come from this headstrong, sharp and deeply feminist filmmaker. Her interest in desire, relationships and the body as both opportunity and limitation, is repeated in the girl gang in Girlhood and in the costume drama Portrait of a Woman on Fire. To start talking about Sciamma "challenging the male gaze" or something like that would be almost ridiculous, her stories of group dynamics, awkward girls and feverish passion come from an undisguised curiosity.
Water Lilies is described
as a French Fucking Åmål, and of course she must have glanced at Lukas Moodysson's film from 1998: love between the quirky and the cool girl, betrayal of friendships and guys as an informal but threatening group in the background. Wonderfully passable Marie (Pauline Acquart) bravely pushes herself into the art swimming team to get close to the gorgeous and cool Floriane (Adèle Haenel), and then gets to act as an apron when Floriane is to meet guys in strange places.
Eventually the balance of power shifts, Floriane is really lost and longs for a friend more than a guy. This delusion allows the (then very young) César-praised superstar Adèle Haenel to appear in small gaps in her otherwise blasé face. Haenel is an amazing actress and if it were not for the fact that her character allowed her to shine much brighter than everyone else, it would be a problem. Pauline Acquart plays grumpy and uncomfortable with that honor, but is not allowed to do much more than stand and walk and glare under the bangs.
Sciamma lingers
for a long time in moods and glances, it would actually have been fun if it had happened a little more in Water Lilies so that the quiet glances had to catch up with something.
The ability is there, it is noticeable in the wonderfully quirky scenes Sciamma sometimes creates.
Like when Marie snorts Floriane's garbage bag and then longingly chews on her apple powder and smells of dirty cotton balls.
It takes a special mind to invent a scene that is so strange but still obviously human.
In fact, her wrist-sweating friend Anne (Louise Blachère) is most promoted by Sciamma's feeling for the strange.
Every situation with her is interesting, unpredictable and heartbreaking.
Water Lilies is
unnecessarily slow and far from as good as Sciamma's later films. But the feeling, the curiosity and the ideas are in place. And the tender loyalty to the people she tells about.