F/F Friday: Water Lilies

[osprey_archer]

Although there is an f/f… I hesitate to say romance… pairing in Celine Sciamma’s Water Lilies, the movie is neither a romance nor a coming of age story, but rather an evocation of a particular age.

Specifically, it’s an evocation of the feeling “Doesn’t it suck to be a young teenager?”

To illustrate this theme, we have a weird romantic polygon, consisting of:

MARIE, a fourteen-year-old who goes to her friend Anne’s synchronized swimming tournament and falls in love with team captain

FLORIANE, slightly older, blonde, gorgeous, involved in an on-again off-again thing with

FRANCOIS, who wants Floriane to sleep with him, which she doesn’t want to do because despite her reputation (slutty) she’s actually a virgin and she doesn’t want him to know; and Francois is also being crushed on by

ANNE, Marie’s friend, although they are at that awkward in between age where they’ve been friends since childhood, but now that they’re growing older it’s not clear they have anything in common anymore.

Floriane becomes aware of Marie’s crush and convinces Marie to meet her at her house… and then ditches Marie for an hour while she runs off to hang out with Francois. To Marie’s credit, this works exactly once: the next time Floriane tries it, Marie informs her that she’s not going to cover for her again, and Floriane is so impressed/appalled by the idea of going home without her “I was totally out with a friend and not a BOY, Mom!” cover that she ditches Francois to hang out with Marie.

They have a splendid evening together, and this is when Floriane is when she tells Marie that Francois wants to have sex with her, but she can’t have sex with him because she’s a virgin, so could Marie like… help with that… maybe?

Which of course is simultaneously Marie’s GREATEST DREAM (Floriane wants to have sex with her! Sort of!) and WORST NIGHTMARE (...but only so she’s not a virgin when she has sex with her boyfriend) and the ensuing hymen-breaking scene is tragically awkward and un-erotic.

(Floriane is clearly very confused about her sexuality and you hope she will work it out someday, preferably far away from Marie.)

Meanwhile, brimming with sexual frustration, Francois has sex with Anne, who is at first elated but then realizes that he has no feelings for her whatsoever and is just taking advantages of her feelings for him.

In a way you have to admire this commitment to showing misery and despair and bad sex know no bounds of sexual orientation, but it’s also sort of grueling in a way that isn’t very much lightened by Marie and Anne’s brief idyllic swim in the pool at the end. It’s nice that their friendship can be a bastion of stability from their romantic woes, but I’d feel better about it if I didn’t feel like their friendship was a holdover from childhood that probably won’t last, you know?

Comments

[asakiyume]

Your last paragraph has got me thinking about what when and how friendships survive those huge transitions--things like moving into adulthood, or actual geographical moves, or big changes in status (one person gets a committed partner, or one person has a kid, or one person gets a chronic illness--or achieves celebrity). I think we've talked about this, so I'm almost certain to be repeating what I said at the time, but a will to continue the friendship seems almost more important to me than anything else (other contenders being mutual interests, similar sensibilities, and similar overall desires--I mean those things can definitely bring down a friendship if they're unaligned, but the will to remain friends can really do a lot to overcome the unalignment, and I'm not sure those things alone can maintain a friendship if you don't have a strong will to put in work, too).

François sounds like a jerk; everyone should ditch him. Floriane sounds like a pretty big jerk too.

[osprey_archer]

My feeling in general is that if two people no longer have anything in common but a will to remain friends, then it's likely that the will itself is likely wane as well over time - one or both of them will start thinking "But wouldn't it be nice to have a friend who shared ANY of my interests?"

But that might also depend on how much intensity the friendship demands. If this is a I-see-this-person-once-a-year-and-we-have-a-good-time-catching-up friend, that's much easier to keep going than a friend you see every day and you don't have anything in common any more.

In the particular case of this movie, Marie and Anne don't seem to have any friends aside from each other, which seems like a particularly combustible friendship situation: it might force them to keep hanging out (in fact, sometimes it seems like it has forced them to keep hanging out) because they have no alternatives, but in general I think that kind of isolation makes a friendship (or any relationship) more combustible. If you only have this one person and that person disappoints you, that's kind of a catastrophe.

[katherine]

I really liked reading this review, thank you.

[osprey_archer]

Glad you enjoyed the review!