I love this movie so much

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The French invented the film. And made the first films. Which were just a freak show display: boring short scenes demonstrating the new technique. It was a good policy because a 15 minute movie eats up far more film than a trigger happy photographer in the same amount of time. Once the Americans started doing business with the new tool the French had a hard time following. At the start of the 20th century they are into nationalism and cheap romance, but nothing like the Germans. After World War II they start building a glorious virtual history with easy comedy and some drama. Hollywood builds up large productions? They are going to do the same: make a list of stars and use the power of the state to impose quotas on the consumption of imported cultural goods. The New Wave was an attempt to make something. Well polished movies trying the realism mastered by the Italians some decades ago. But that was over in less than two decades. And even with the state restrictions imported movies are far more interesting even when dubbed.So in the 1990s some independent makers started exploiting shock. Sex. Unconventional. Abusive. Usually without consent. Finally 2000s brought the new step into pedophilia. Label it as art. Sell it to an audience of old males.This is a very slow movie about four youngsters. Sex. No family. No relation with the reality of the constricted Catholic society. While the French can spend their holidays with their parents well into their 40s, there is no adult here. Teens in this fairy tale seem to be able to sleep where they please. Some might argue this is some fairy tale so the reality has nothing to do with it. But even the characters are badly drawn. The chubby who is too scared to undress with the other girls at the pool where she trains is bold enough to enter the boys locker room. And deliver a message in front of everyone. And the young boys barely notice her.The relationships are also sketchy. Although it is very important for the final part, the relationship between the boy and the "cheerleader" is barely shown leaving big gaps.Bad script, bad acting, only a vehicle to deliver to a particular audience a scene of young girls masturbating.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

If you were looking for some kind of voyeuristic, sexy, lesbian teen drama...zip up your pants because this isn't it. Or (for whatever reason) you were looking for a synchronized swimming movie, this isn't it either.The plot is a familiar one: 3 very different teenage girls in a French suburb deal with their sexuality and the loss of innocence. I thought it was a brilliant touch to not include any parents or adults in this movie. There's no "unique" way to approach the subject matter because anyone who has ever been a teenager has lived through this movie...all the uncertainty, the awkwardness, the naivety, the myths of growing up. The whole point of a coming-of-age film is that its a predictable cliché...because that's exactly what adolescence is.There's no unpretentious way to say this: Naissance des Pieuvres isn't a movie at all, it's a film. And a beautiful one, at that. There's this looseness about the way the movie rolls that feels so natural...it's what all coming-of-age films should be like. Another reviewer here mentioned that it had a very Sofia Coppola feel and that's exactly right. That feeling of dreamy teenage idleness is persistent and strangely keeps the film together. There are few movies that make you feel like floating and sinking at the same time. Water Lilies did it for me. Every scene and every sound (the soundtrack is BRILLIANT) in this film was so deliberate and so beautifully acted.If absolutely nothing convinces you, at least watch the last 5 minutes of this movie. I've replayed it at least a dozen times and I don't completely understand why. It's hypnotic and arguably one of the best movie endings of modern film.9/10.

I don't usually write reviews but I felt the need to point out that through out this movie I kept murmuring: "This isn't right", "No!", "Why?", and many things along this line. I'm not trying to imply that this was a bad movie but if you are an American, don't expect this to be something Universal Studios would film. With every next scene I would think: How can they film this? But that may be my American mind. I'll give it a neutral 5 rate, since I'm still unsure how I feel about it.

In this swimming pool, this pond, there are water lilies and there are frogs. Frogs sit on water lilies. The frog and water lily have a parasitic relationship. Marie(Pauline Acquart) is a water lily, a synchronized swimming groupie with a crush on Floraine(Adele Haenel), a frog, the captain of her team. Floraine's teammates shun their leader because the preternaturally curvy and well-proportioned blonde conveys a loose persona that betrays the syncrhronized swimmer's mindset of conformity and discipline. But Floraine has a secret; the bombshell has a bombshell, which "Naissance des pieuvres" reveals to the audience, visually, before she confides in Marie.Floraine has never gone, as they say, all the way, with a boy.At a party, we see a double-image of the burgeoning sex bomb checking her make-up in a bathroom mirror. "Lolita" is a fata morgana. Marie gets to know Floraine's double while her imitation breaks the water lily's heart. While the frog goes through the motions of catching flies for appearance's sake, she gets chummy with the water lily when no one's looking. In the film's most startling scene, the water lily agrees to give the frog a hand in losing her virginity through the mechanical act of oral stimulation. Floraine wants boys to like her, but she doesn't like boys, seemingly, but it's more important to the frog that she's popular. When the water lily finally kisses the frog, the frog remains a frog. The frog can't transform into a water lily, or a princess, because the water lily lost the frog's respect. After their lips unlock, Floraine tells Marie, "See, it's easy," which is the frog's way of equating their kiss with the orgasm that her friend gave her as nothing more than a rite-of-passage without any strings attached. Floraine's beauty is a burden. She carries the weight of meeting boy's expectations. Florence uses Marie to have one final fling before her fata morgana subjugates its imitation into the closet.The other water lily, the other frog, Marie's best friend Anne(Louise Blachere) and Floraine's frustrated boy-toy Francois(Warren Jacobs), just like any water lily and frog, have a parasitic relationship, too. While Floraine uses Marie for love, Francois uses Anne for sex. But that's life; that's the treachery of growing up, in which even a friend will turn on a good friend if the opportunity to move up the food chain presents itself. At a McDonalds, the water lily chastises the other water lily after bathing extensively in the frog's afterglow. Physical beauty is a currency. Marie gets to call the shots because Anne, although far from being ugly, is overweight and has an unflattering hairdo. Anne tries to fight back by using her breasts as ample retaliation(the magnifying glass from her Happy Meal incidentally comments on Marie's flat chest), but the tadpole(Marie thinks she's better than Anne, better than a water lily) points out that her breasts are a byproduct of fat. Teenaged girls can be brutal to each other.Later, in the final shot, "Naissance des pieuvres" suggests that Marie has a double, too, and this symbiosis among water lilies has the potential to turn parasitic in the near-future, if it not already has. Teenaged girls can be brutal to each other in a way that no boy could match.