Girls Can't Swim

Rating:
Summary: Haven't I seen this somewhere before?
Review: A French coming-of-age art film that I rented while on vacation. Despite rave reviews all over the packaging, this story of two moody teenage girls growing apart as sexuality enters their lives seemed pretty slow and predictable, even a bit tedious. Jet lag set in and we gave up two-thirds of the way through the film, and took it back the next day. In all fairness, this is probably a fine film if you're in the mood for Serious Art, but I found it a bit dreary.

Rating:
Summary: Haven't I seen this somewhere before?
Review: A French coming-of-age art film that I rented while on vacation. Despite rave reviews all over the packaging, this story of two moody teenage girls growing apart as sexuality enters their lives seemed pretty slow and predictable, even a bit tedious. Jet lag set in and we gave up two-thirds of the way through the film, and took it back the next day. In all fairness, this is probably a fine film if you're in the mood for Serious Art, but I found it a bit dreary.

Rating:
Summary: French movies, got to love them
Review: I do own this film and I bought it after renting it for it's bizarre, unique plot that comes across as outright laughable sometimes. This is a coming of age film about two friends: a promiscuos teenager named Gwen who seems to wear the same pair of pants throughout the entire movie and her friend Lise.
They visit each other every summer and throughout the rest of the year they carry on a close correspondence. Lise has just bought a new bathing suit and is planning her trip back when tragedy strikes and her father dies. The bathing suit, I think is supposed to symbolize her entrance into womanhood, but unfortunately this bathing suit is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.
Her and Gwen begin to realize they are very different. First of all, Gwen likes sex, really likes it. She is caught in "the act" at least twice. Lise is disappointed because of how things have changed and she begins to bond instead with Gwen's father, which causes an even bigger rift between them. The film ends on such a laughably bizarre note that I had to give it kudos, because I didn't think it could get any more absurd.
If you buy this movie, it works as a coming of age film, even though it is a little melodramatic. Also, you need to take it with a grain of salt. I liked this movie because the plot was so stupid at times that I found it incredibly amusing. It is another one of those famous french movies, you know, with the 13-15 year old girl getting naked and demanding that a man, often twice her age, satisfy her. This film also does have some serious undertones, and if they had maybe just taken the melodrama down a couple of notches, the message would be a lot clearer.

Rating:
Summary: Irritating and unorigional
Review: I don't remember seeing Isild Le Besco in any other films, but she does look a bit familiar. If I have seen her elsewhere, it must have been in a role that she performed with much greater insight and finesse than Gwen from 'Girl's Can't Swim', or I definitely would remember. I'm still not sure what the title actually means... something about young women struggling to find their way... blah blah blah... but, it actually wasn't a terrible film. Nevertheless, Le Besco's performance is one of the most irritating I've seen in years. I was reminded of Dorothy Parker's cutting remark when critiquing a Katherine Hepburn film: 'She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.'
Le Besco was either shown with an extremely obnoxous smile plastered on her face, or she was smacking her friends or family in a 'hissy fit of rage'. These tantrums always ended with Gwen running off to the sea with all the grace of a three-legged moose. What made LeBesco's performance stand out even more was the fact that everyone else's performances were nearly flawless.
This film was recommended to me after purchasing 'L'Effrontee', a truly marvelous picture. While watching the first 30 minutes of 'Girl's Can't Swim' I could see that I was not the only person who admired 'L'Effontee's' subtle brilliance. Obviously the director and/or screenwriter of 'Girl's Cant' Swim' intended on building upon the other film's message, but as a lark, they subtracted all of its poignance and sensitivity.
I give the film 2 out of 5 because, despite its flaws, it is still superior to the vast majority of 'toejam' that hollywood produces each year.

Rating:
Summary: Passionate, believable, performances; no ending.
Review: I'm frequently impressed at how well French filmmakers capture the tumultuous emotions of adolescence. While most American films try for "popcorn pulp" treatments of teenage life - light, cliched situations played out by kids who seem to have been cast for how well they'd grace the cover of Seventeen or YM Magazines rather than for any acting talent - Girls Can't Swim (or Les Filles Ne Savent Pas Nager, as the French call it) offers serious explorations of the minds and passions of its two fifteen-year-old protagonists, played with intense passion and sincerity by its stars. The basic premise is nothing new: Gwen and Lise have grown up best of friends, and Lise and her family spend every summer vacation at the beach town where Gwen lives. But this summer, Gwen is less inclined to spend time with Lise as she is with the local boys, who are eager to take advantage in her newfound interest in sex. Lise, whose estranged father has recently died, begins replacing Gwen as favorite in the eyes of Gwen's unemployed father. And the intimate friendship they have treasured all their lives unravels with each new conflict.

Visually, the movie is absolutely beautiful. The acting by the two stars is superb, and the characters they play are beautifully developed - fully believable adolescents. Isild Le Besco deftly captures the desperation behind Gwen's freewheeling and promiscuous experimentations with sex, and Karen Alyx infuses Lise with an almost dangerous, introverted fire, remeniscent of Melanie Lynskey in Heavenly Creatures. Many of the supporting roles were very well-played too, especially Sandrine Blancke as Lise's older sister Vivianne and Pascal Elso as Gwen's father Alain. And unlike the vast majority of cinema I've seen, this film makes a marked distinction between sex and nudity. Yes, the girls get naked from time to time; yet, with the exception of one important scene which functions as a major turning point in the story, nearly none of the nudity is involved in the sex. The love/hate duality of the relationships among the various characters within the film is honest and believable, and the "disfunctional"-ness of the two families (and their self-destructive attempts to escape from their own lives) is well-calculated.

I can forgive all but one of the film's flaws (lack of any male characters even half as well-defined as the female ones, weak dialogue, lack of narrative coherence, etc.) on account of its strengths. But there is one I cannot forgive. At the climax of the story, a catastrophic event occurs that threatens to destroy the friendship permanently, and the film ends there. There is no aftermath, no resolution of any kind. It merely cuts off at the climax. The effect is tantamount to ending Empire Strikes Back the moment Darth Vader drops his famous bombshell about Luke Skywalker's true pedigree. All the more so because not only do you never find out what this does to the two girls and their futures, you never find out if the catastrophe that happened was purely an accident, as it seems on the surface, or if Lise had been planning it. It's one of those violations of dramatic structure that can't go by unnoticed or unobjected-to.

I'd say rent before you buy it, and judge for yourself if the powerful performances it has going for it make it worth buying despite the fact it's missing its third act.

Rating:
Summary: Fantasstical
Review: This movie was awesome to the max, dude. It totally rocked my ... world. 'Cause I was always under the impression that girls COULD swim....but now I know they can not.

This movie should be shown at film schools and kindergartens around the world.

The scene with the breast stroke made me estatic!

Rating:
Summary: Superficial
Review: Whatever happened to the glory days of French cinema like Truffaut, Godard etc, now replaced by unimaginative "realists" of the type represented in this movie. From the cardboard cutout characters to the inane "plot" this is a film that only teenage girls of 17 and a half could empathize with. This film doesn't tell you anything you haven't seen before in the "coming of age" category...oh, the confusion, the tears, the lousy sex, the intolerant parents etc etc. The only redeeming feature is the actresses who do a brave job with the atrocious screenplay.