| Water Lilies | 
 enlarge | Director: Celine Sciamma
Actors: Pauline Acquart, Louise Blachere, Adele Haenel, Warren Jacquin, Christelle Baras
Studio: Koch Lorber Films
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $11.72
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New (36) Used (12) from $10.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 19840
Format: Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 85
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 3147
UPC: 741952314790
EAN: 0741952314790
ASIN: B001AZ5IV0
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new; still in shrink wrap!!
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Product Description
Studio: Koch International Release Date: 09/02/2008 Run time: 86 minutes
Amazon.com
Director Celine Sciamma's feature debut, Water Lilies, recalls the intimacy of teenage friendship as it tells the story of three girls grappling with their newly formed sexual identities in suburban Paris. Opening with scenes of the local high school's synchronized swimming team, Water Lilies stars Marie (Pauline Acquart), coveting a spot on the sophisticated female sports team. Her best friend, Anne (Louise Blachere), is non-athletic and grows increasingly disturbed as Marie courts swim team captain, sexy Floriane (Adele Haenel), to secure a place in the popular group. However, as Marie and Floriane grow closer, Marie learns hard lessons about loyalty and bonds girls develop at this crucial life stage. Water Lilies is stylishly filmed, with slow, rolling scenes reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's film, The Virgin Suicides. A charming shot of Marie, for example, kicking her legs up in the bath as her pet turtle swims around her exemplifies the cute, acutely personal tone this film cultivates. All three girls, but especially Floriane, exude hipster appeal that is greatly enhanced by a subtle lesbian subtext that underlies their love triangle conflict. As borders between friendship and attraction melt away, Water Lilies becomes testament to the unique intimacy that females can achieve. Unlike Sofia Coppola's films, which tend to gloss over character depth in favor of pinpointing fashionable aspects of melancholy, this film's narrative unfolds craftily, through quiet dialogue between the girls that show how deeply each cares for the other. Scenes in locker rooms and swimming pools alone, as the "synchro" girls travel for competitions, get costumed, and practice their routines, make Water Lilies enjoyable. Even more rewarding, however, is Sciamma's ability to turn teenage identity crisis into something humorous, while still conveying its severity and high-stakes outcomes. --Trinie Dalton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Great acting, good story January 1, 2009
+ Two beautiful young girls
+ Better than average acting
- For some it won't be sexual enough. Since the girls are young they really shouldn't expect that much =P.
- For most the ending won't be satisfying
Depths for the deep December 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A film review should help you decide whether or not to see the film. It shouldn't be some reviewer's soapbox. Rather, it's like a matchmaking service, looking not for the reviewer's ideal spouse, but the one for you.
That's what I'll try to do here.
First some filters: this is an organically-paced film in French, with subtitles, shot on a low budget. So if you demand that everything you see look like a glossy Hollywood spectacular, skip "Water Lilies." Even the landscapes aren't gorgeous. This is the Paris of sprawling anonymous suburbs. I'm not sure the characters have even seen the Eiffel Tower... except on TV.
And skip it if you're looking for French porn shot from a middle-aged male point of view (Louis Malle comes to mind). There's nudity here but it's painful, not titillating. There's powerful romantic passion but not the kind of elaborately choreographed love scenes that pass for "sexy" in Hollywood.
Also skip it if you're looking for a lesbian film. It's not about the lesbian community. It's not about a teen discovering she's lesbian and dealing with family and friends who are horrified, yada yada. None of that. There is at least one lesbian in the film, but that doesn't make it a lesbian film, any more than the presence of a black guy in a leading role in "The Matrix" made it a "black film." Lesbianism isn't the subject of "Wild Lilies."
Moreover, skip it if you don't want to see how three fifteen-year old girls see the world. This is what led to one singularly dense reviewer calling this a man-hating film. Well, duh. Imagine what boys are like from a fifteen year old girl's perspective. Girls mature emotionally before boys do, by and large. Boys don't catch up until they're in their 20s (if ever, some might add). The boys' preoccupation with getting laid, coupled with their emotional tone-deafness, makes them seem just like they're presented in this movie. If you're a man reading this, think back. You were like that then, weren't you? Be honest. Aren't you embarrassed by how you behaved during your first years of dating? I know I am.
Lastly, skip it if you want to cling to the belief that teenagers live strictly within the boundaries of a Disney teen comedy like, say, "Freaky Friday." I don't want to give away the plot, so I won't get into specifics like some other reviewers do, but some of the stuff these teens do will make you sit back and go "Whoa..."
But in retrospect it all makes sense--especially since these three teens are all outsiders: the girl boys lust after but who girls hate/despise; the overweight girl desperate for love; and the central figure, a skinny girl (think Scarlett Johansson without the curves) with the passionate depth of Juliet without any of Juliet's Shakespearian articulacy--and whose Romeo is ambivalent about her.
Hollywood screenwriters love the sound of their own words (with some exceptions, like Clint Eastwood), and their screen teens jabber incessantly, usually with the language and obsessions of a middle-aged male screenwriter ("Dawson's Creek"). But "Water Lilies"' teens talk in monosyllables, like many teens do.
And Hollywood teen actors grin and grimace and in general emote the paint off the walls. "Wild Lilies"'s teens look at the world through hooded eyes, with guarded expressions, never revealing more of what's going on inside than they have to.
This looks like non-acting to those accustomed to seeing people sawing the air with their hands and chewing the scenery. To watch this movie you have to recalibrate your head so you can watch people acting like people really act.
Do that, though, and you'll be rewarded richly. Pauline Acquart, who plays the movie's central figure Marie, is in nearly every scene; the movie rests on her narrow shoulders. As I said, she gives away nothing she doesn't have to. Yet hers is one of the most compelling portrayals I've seen of love so powerful it's nearly self-annihilating. But even then she never blurts out one of those totally phony self-revealing-speeches Hollywood uses to explain a character's motivations.
You have to watch Acquart as closely as she watches everyone around her to pry loose her secrets. And even though her love is probably hopeless, and even though it consumes her, she maintains an admirable, stoic dignity. Her courage is equally formidable. She's not one of those outgoing characters who naturally dominates a room. Nor is she a stalker, because stalkers believe their stalkee feels the same way about them and act accordingly. Marie has no such illusions.
Yet even though she has neither charisma, connections, nor the pseudo-courage of a nutcase, nor great beauty, she builds a connection with the one she wants, sometimes cautiously, sometimes boldly, as the occasion demands. She's an audacious general commanding a ragtag force in a war for someone's heart, and it's both fascinating and touching to watch her campaign evolve.
There's a scene in "Jerry Maguire" in which Renee Zelwegger's character dumps Tom Cruise's character, even though she loves him completely, because she can tell he doesn't love her as intensely as she loves him. Acquart's character, albeit less articulately, shows she's capable of the same kind of decision--even though she also shows that she will do almost anything for her Romeo (who's a female, as it happens, but this Romeo being female is absolutely not the point).
One other thing: this film shows us a few weeks in the lives of these three fifteen year olds. When the film ends, we don't know what "happens" later. That is, nothing is wrapped up with a ribbon tied around it. Nor should you expect the film to do so. These are 15 year olds, for heaven's sake.
Some Greek poet said "Call no man happy until his life is over." Likewise with these girls.
That said, I hope the director makes a sequel, with these same three actors. They've earned it. And they've earned your viewership--if you're worthy of this film.
 Not Enough Current in These Waters December 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Looking at the other tags people have used to describe this film, I can tell you that "nudity" and "artistic nude" are misleading and overblown. The poster for the film would suggest an erotic lesbian relationship between the two pretty leads...but only the chubby friend ever shows her body. And that's in the early scenes. The more the film delves deeper into the desires of the budding lesbians, the more shy and chaste the direction becomes.
Teenage years are the awkward years for anyone but...I think the French girls are even weirder than American girls (at least movie French girls are weirder). Whether it's a close friendship or a lesbian desire, I doubt that many girls would be stealing the trash of their Object of Desire and tasting their discarded food. I get the symbolism--trying to connect with her love since society/world/coaches won't accept the lesbian way--but it just comes off as really odd. (at least, I think that's what they meant).
Young boys or adult men appear in the film but they're like a stupid, rape-minded occupying force. They either show up to violently grope a girl or dance around like savages with swimming trunks on their heads (I am not making that up).
This isn't the worst lesbian movie I've ever seen. It's very professional and understated. But it's also very slow and ponderous. What did all lead to? Couldn't tell you. The characters do what they're supposed to do in these dramas but you never feel like you're getting to know a real person, or a real character.
Water Lilies is Water Lilies December 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After viewing Naissance des pieuvres two days after my arrival home from the East Coast, I want to re-negociate this maxim: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I declare: certain beauty, however, should be in the eyes of all beholders.
I hardly ever write film reviews especially lesbian ones (most, if not nearly all, are crap) because my memory of viewed films is so flimsy and vacuous and I have no talent on writing one. But I cannot resist pontificating on this one: Water Lilies. The original French title of the film Water Lilies is Naissance des Pieuvres, which translates to "birth of the octopuses," directed by a first time director (yes, a neophyte), Celine Sciamma. Unlike most boring critics do, I won't recapture the plot or summarize it in the most obscene way that takes away from the film extraordinary presentation so if you wish to form literary images of what the film constitutes before viewing the movie I highly recommend that you traffic websites such as imbd or rotten tomatoes or potatoes or onions.
Some less intelligent people call Water Lilies trash (I don't blame them. They disposed their how-to-appreciate-brilliant-films into the trash bin and walked airheaded into the theater) and other unreasonable critics claim it to be pretentious and whatnot. This review here by Manohla Dargis is ugly, dry, and ineloquent as any floor that hasn't been swept in twenty years. [..]
[...]
At any rate, I am not here to review reviews of Naissance des pieuvres...It is, really, a brilliant film (lesbian content-wise or not). Its captivating level of rawness and maturity can't be compared to any film about teens I have seen. A strong meditation on the ambiguity of sexual desires. And it offers a fresh gaze on teen angst and budding same gender friendships in an age of pornography. Because of actresses' strong, dictating body language/performance, the film could almost fall under the genre of Silent Film. The acting is superb by Pauline Acquart (who plays Marie) and Adele Haenel (Floriane). Haenel may be the next Catherine Denueve.
The scene starting with "I swear, Marie..." The gaze, the body gesture, the passion from the two leading protagonists hit my heart like lightning. The shot left a billion octupuses inside the vault of my imagination...I simply don't know how to describe...how it reached out to me.
As Andrew O'Hehir stated so precisely:
"Dismissed in some quarters as trash because it depicts a sexual act (of sorts) between two teenage girls, Water Lilies struck me instead as a hypnotic and wholly convincing look at teen culture from the inside, with all its courage, cruelty and unspoken codes of silence intact."
Water Lilies: French Girls Blooming with Desire. November 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It is no coincidence that 27-year-old Celine Sciamma's 2007 film debut, Water Lilies (Naissance des Pieuvres, which translates as Birth of Octopuses), takes its English name from Claude Monet's series of famous oil paintings. Water Lilies tells the story of three beautiful French girls blooming together in water. The subtle French film premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where it was a contender for the Camera d'Or, and it received three nominations for the 2008 Cesar Awards. Set primarly in a swimming pool locker room in Paris, the Belgian drama is a coming-of-age story culminating in the sexual awakenings of three 15-year-old female friends over the course of a languorous summer. Marie (Pauline Acquart), Anne (Louise Blachere) and Floriane (Adele Haenel) unexpectedly discover love, friendship, manipulation, betrayal, and sexuality while competing together in synchronized swimming. Acquart has the classic beauty of a young Scarlett Johansson. While Celine Sciamma shows real promise as a filmmaker, her first film--despite all of its revelations-- ultimately lacks the sexual depths of a Catherine Breillat film. Recommended.
G. Merritt
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