Girls Can't Swim (2000)

Very disappointing...

Very best movie i ever watch

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Two French girlfriends await their annual get-together at the start of summer vacation. The film is constructed in three parts. It starts with the story of Gwen, a flirtatious and perky blonde. The focus then shifts to Lise, a dark-haired and depressed teen who has just lost her father. The two friends come together in the final part. It's not clear what the point of this movie is. There isn't much of a plot. As the two girls undergo mostly mundane experiences, it makes for rather uninteresting viewing. Something out of the ordinary does happen towards the end, but it is so bizarre that it seems to have been added just to have a big finish.

Gwen is a totally unsympathetic character who goes from ballistic to sweet and back in just about every scene she is in. He father is lazy and drunk most of the time and only her mother is a fully functioning person. It seems Gwen's sole motivation is to screw and screw around, but she has neither sense nor sensuality. Lise has a mother who goes to pieces when her ex-husband dies, motivating Lise to run away to see Gwen. Lise, thus far not experienced in the ways of the flesh, has a crush on Gwen that is not returned, and then punishes Gwen for spurning her interest by sabotaging Gwen's "romances". A much more rewarding film is "Lost and Delirious (2001)" where the girls have full-fledged and sympathetically drawn characters and the angst is real and realistic.

My sister and I saw this film at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. The film seemed to drag on forever without much forward motion. When it finally ended, the entire audience burst out laughing--a very odd response to a tragic narrative. I'm not really sure why everyone laughed--nervous tension, perhaps, since the film ends on a down-note. But, it was more than that. It seems that the pacing and the setting were so culturally removed from what most Americans are used to that the film seems almost absurd. Absurd is really not the right word--perhaps the film is just very difficult to identify with due to the overlong and tedious pacing and the utter lack of humorous moments to offset the downward spiral into sadness. I hate to mention cultural difference as being a reason to judge a film, but clearly some universal message was missing. Kieslowski's _Ten Commandments_ are examples of films that depict a very different culture from what some people in other countries might experience, but Kieslowski manages to instill a sense of humanity and timelessness to his work that _Girls Can't Swim_ cannot seem to muster. And from my perspective, the two girls simply weren't very compelling. One teenage girl explores sex, the other is depressed over her father's death and does things like see how long she can hold her breath under water. Ho hum. Both could have used a bit more character development. This isn't a bad film--just a very slow, humorless one.

Was this supposed to be the french "Marny". I don't know, I just know that the lead girl was pretty boring. When her girlfriend finally showed up, it was too late to save the film.I never could figure out where anyone was coming from, except the father and he was portrayed as being unsympathetic.The mother needed a bigger role, as the director found out too late.