Editor’s Note: Throughout June, Cinematary has celebrated Pride Month with a series of essays written by some of our LGBT+ critics about LGBT+ films of their choice. Apologies about the lack of an essay last Monday – we had a writer have to drop out due to extenuating circumstances. Regardless, we are excited to share our final essay, in which Paige Taylor writes about Water Lilies, the debut feature of Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma.
Retro Review / Personal Essay by Paige Taylor
Warning: Spoilers and explicit language.
I’m gonna be real with you. Every time I’m face to face with a teenager going through puberty and budding sexuality all while being watched by hundreds of their equally hormone-tortured peers all I can think is:
Good fucking luck, kid.
And then after that, I feel a strong need to protect and nurture them. I want to sit them down and give them all the wisdom I learned the hard way, answer all the questions they’re too embarrassed to say out loud, and assure them that their road to adulthood might feel shitty and weird but that is 100% expected and normal. There is beauty in this adventure too. Céline Sciamma clearly feels the same way.
Water Lilies opens up at a school synchronized swim competition. We are introduced to Anne (Louise Blachère), a character who immediately reads as the dorky girl who longs to be accepted and admired. We also see the captain of the swim team, Floriane (Adèle Haenel), a beautiful and confident athlete. Lastly, we are acquainted with Marie (Pauline Acquart), a quiet and shy girl who immediately has eyes for Floriane.
The film takes these three 15-year-olds and explores the way they all navigate through their individual sexual awakenings. I really want to examine each of these characters because ya girl Céline Sciamma does NOT mess around when it comes to character development and she ESPECIALLY kills at it when one of them is doing a whole lot of sapphic pining.
First, I wanna talk about Anne, the character a general audience can most easily identify with.
She’s low on the totem pole when it comes to social status, tries hard to fit in about, and she’s MEGA thirsty. She sets her sights on François, and if you think of the phrase “default hot blonde boy” then I can tell you matter-of-factly that François just manifested into your brain and he’ll be there for about 9 seconds before you’re already bored. But I forgive Anne for her taste.
Here’s the thing I dig about Anne’s story. I’ve seen a handful of “nerdy girl gets the hot boy” movies. I’ve seen a few “nerdy girl loses interest in the hot boy in favor of her nerdy friend” plots (we all know Lizzie McGuire kissing Gordo was God tier). But never have I EVER seen a, “Nerdy girl fucks the hot boy, hot boy is greedy and DREADFUL at sex, and the next time he asks her she spits in his mouth and peaces out” story. This is a gamechanger.
All my parents told me growing up was, “Don’t have sex until you’re married!!!” and that didn’t hinder me one bit. Ya know what would have stopped me in my tracks? If my mom looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Paige. High school boys make-out like a mother penguin feeding her young. They don’t know what a clitoris is. And they finish in 45 seconds.”
I truly believe that revealing François to be this unskilled, selfish lover is crucial information to young girls because it highlights the fact that young men don’t know how to please young women and often aren’t interested in female pleasure in the first place. Sexual attention is not the same as respect, care, and affection. If your heart is interested in someone who only wants to use you to get off, then I promise you the sex isn’t worth it. In other words, don’t fuck a François.
I love Sciamma's portrayal of Anne's starter pack to sexual desire because it includes a boldness young girls typically don't have unless they've had their egos stroked their entire lives. Nobody really has eyes for Anne but that doesn't deter her at all. François accidentally walks in on her naked in the locker room and instead of feeling humiliation, she is thrilled. She waits until all the girls have left one afternooon and stands there naked a second time, all in the hopes that her blonde dummy will "accidentally" look at her again (a booby trap, if you will). Later, she waltzes through the boys' locker room and gives him a note and a stolen necklace and makes it very clear that she is DTF. And when he turns out to be a flailing, flopping fish at sex with zero respect for her? She's bold about her rejection too.
Now my girl Marie… she chooses a more subtle route to pursue her crush.
God, I love an infatuated baby gay. Really takes me back to all the pretty girls I worked so hard to impress in middle school just to get a crumb of their attention. Humiliating.
Embarrassing retrospection aside, Sciamma really knocks the depiction of Marie’s desire out of the park. Marie’s crush on Floriane is utterly consuming and it is all depicted wordlessly. Sciamma instead opts for carnal imagery, uncomfortable acts of obsession in order to feel intimacy without seeking it out directly. She also relies heavily on Pauline Acquart’s superb emotional performances. There is no longing internal dialogue or long-winded confessions. We merely follow the heat of Marie’s gaze, her body language in response to betrayal and attention, the way the camera lingers on Floriane’s face. The emotion is painted masterfully.
Despite how badly Marie wants to be close to Floriane, she never once demands it. Instead, Marie offers her servitude over and over in the hopes of gaining her favor. She watches boys and men prey on Floriane relentlessly, with no regard to her feelings or perspective, and this both breaks her heart into pieces and fills her with jealousy. Marie's method of dealing with her longing is a quiet, private one. While men are loud and entitled to Floriane's body, Marie reveres her, protects her, and treats every kind moment with her as one laden with intimacy and meaning. Like a synchronized swimmer, Marie tries her best to be calm and quiet on the surface, but she's kicking like hell beneath the waves.
Lastly, there's Floriane.
My heart weeps for girls like Floriane.
Floriane has a very developed body for a teenage girl paired with a lovely face. This makes her a target for gross males of all ages, and a frequent subject of gossip and slut shaming. Floriane deals with this attention in the only way she feels she can have agency: by playing the role that is given to her.
Floriane’s tale isn’t so much about dealing with her own sexual awakening, but learning to keep herself standing steady against a current of males who can’t keep their hands off her, and the way this attention paints her as an aggressor rather than a victim.
Hearing her normalize the way her adult teacher regularly assaults her and the way she feels forced to have her hymen broken to feign sexual experience is pure agony. She learns to survive by being cruel and aloof and believes that the box her peers have put her in is one she has to remain inside.
The fact that this is Sciamma’s debut film is baffling. Before I wrote this review, I let the film settle into the recesses of my mind for a bit and let it simmer. I’ve thought about how Sciamma was able to portray virginity and desire with a careful, empathetic hand rather than a voyeuristic one. I thought about how both dialogue and silence are used as tools of impact and reflection. I thought about how grateful I am to have female queer directors telling queer stories. But mostly I thought about how much it moved me.
