Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
Céline Sciamma's debut is a remarkably assured first film — quietly observational, emotionally precise, and distinctly personal in its rendering of adolescent desire and female friendship. The synchronized swimming setting provides a genuinely unusual backdrop, and Sciamma's refusal of melodrama in favor of longing glances and ambient tension gives the film a singular, delicate voice. The performances are naturalistic and believable, capturing the awkward intensity of teenage sexuality without exploitation. Cinematography is clean and evocative if not particularly inventive. The plot, while slim, serves its character study well. The ending, however, feels somewhat abrupt and underresolved — emotionally coherent but lacking the culminating weight the buildup seems to promise.