Girls Can't Swim

Girls Can't Swim (French: Les Filles ne savent pas nager) 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.[2] It was given a limited theatrical release in the United States on 19 April 2002.[2]

Girls Can't Swim
Film poster
Directed byAnne-Sophie Birot
Written byAnne-Sophie Birot
Christophe Honoré
Produced byPhilippe Jacquier
StarringIsild Le Besco
Karen Alyx
Pascale Bussières
Pascal Elso
Marie Rivière
Yelda Reynaud
Sandrine Blancke
Julien Cottereau
Dominique Lacarrière
CinematographyNathalie Durand
Edited byPascale Chavance
Music byErnest Chausson
Production
company
Centre National de la Cinématographie
Distributed byHaut et Court
Release date
18 October 2000 (France)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Box office$69,250[1]

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

Reception

Stephen Holden of the New York Times said "Girls Can't Swim ultimately lacks the epic dimension of Y Tu Mamá También, 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."[3]

Leslie Camhi of The Village Voice gave a positive review, writing “[Birot’s] 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.”[4]

Jamie Russell of the BBC reviewed the film positively, stating “Sexual politics aside, what makes 'Girls Can't Swim' so involving is debut filmmaker Anne Sophie-Birot's nicely observed script, which treats its adolescent heroines with a wonderful amount of compassion.”[5]

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.”[6]

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, familiar—and not in a good way.”[7] 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."[8]

The film has a 71% approval based on 34 reviews on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.[9]

References
  1. "Girls Can't Swim". Box Office Mojo.
  2. "Girls Can't Swim". TCM Movie Database. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
  3. Holden, Stephen (19 April 2002). "FILM REVIEW; Two Girls and a Boy Swept Away by Themselves". New York Times. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
  4. Camhi, Leslie (17 April 2002). "Girls Can't Swim review". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on 6 June 2002. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
  5. "Girls Can't Swim (Les Filles ne savent pas nager) Review". www.bbc.co.uk. 14 April 2003. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
  6. Nechak, Paula (16 August 2002). "Tale of two teenage friends surprises with its power". Seattle PI. Archived from the original on 2 October 2002. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
  7. Taylor, Charles (24 April 2002). ""Girls Can't Swim"". Salon.com. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
  8. Ebert, Roger (9 August 2002). "Girls Can't Swim". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
  9. "Girls Can't Swim". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2 May 2002.
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