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Girls Can't Swim
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Wikipedia article
'Girls Can't Swim' is a 2000 French coming of age drama film. The film had its world premiere at the 2000 Montreal World Film Festival and was released in France on 18 October of that year. It was given a limited theatrical release in the United States on 19 April 2002.
Plot
Gwen is a teenager living in a coastal town in Brittany; Lise is her city-living best friend. They meet up each summer as Lise's family visits. This year's visit is different though - Lise is dealing with her distant father's death, and Gwen has become promiscuous with boys, which threatens to affect the girls' friendship.
Cast
* Isild Le Besco as Gwen
* Karen Alyx as Lise
* Pascale Bussires as Cline
* Pascal Elso as Alain
* Marie Rivire as Anne-Marie
* Yelda Reynaud as Solange
* Sandrine Blancke as Vivianne
* Julien Cottereau as Frdo
* Dominique Lacarrire as Rose
Reception
Stephen Holden of the New York Times said "'Girls Can't Swim' ultimately lacks the epic dimension of 'Y Tu Mam Tambin,' but its vision of that awkward age when sex threatens to overwhelm everything else is acute enough to make everyone who has been there squirm with recognition."
Leslie Camhi of 'The Village Voice' gave a positive review, writing [Birots] film falters when it takes a final, violent turn into melodrama. Until then, though, she captures the deep currents of love and rivalry that make female teen friendships so important and so volatile.
Jamie Russell of the BBC reviewed the film positively, stating Sexual politics aside, what makes 'Girls Can't Swim'
Paula Nechak of the 'Seattle Post-Intelligencer' said, Birot delves into subtexts on the principles of transference: the Oedipal attachments to their fathers that the girls renounce in order to gain other love objects. Her exploration of these psychological tenets in the context of modern teen behavior makes for darkly compelling and fresh viewing.
On the other hand, Charles Taylor of 'Salon' gave a negative review, writing, Everything about 'Girls Can't Swim', even its passages of sensitive observation, feels secondhand, familiarand not in a good way. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, saying "The phrase coming of age,' when applied to movies, almost always implies sex, but 'Girls Can't Swim' has nothing useful to say about sex (certainly not compared to Catherine Breillat's brilliant 'Fat Girl' from last year), and is too jerky in structure to inspire much empathy from us."
The film has a 71% approval based on 34 reviews on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
References
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