Water Lilies
Khoi Vinh

Review by Khoi Vinh Patron

Water Lilies 2007

★★★★

Watched 14 Jun 2024

Jeebus, has Céline Sciamma been one of the best directors working for the past two decades and I’m only just realizing now? I was floored by “Portrait of a Woman on Fire” and adored “Petite Maman,” but I didn’t realize she was in such precise control of her craft practically out of the gate. Not only that, with this directorial debut she seemed to have already had an innate understanding of the stories she wanted to focus on. This is a sometimes funny but ultimately heartbreaking tale of three teenage girls dealing with adolescent love; it encapsulates with perfect clarity Sciamma’s fascination with the realities that women create between themselves and their inherent instability in the world of men, almost as if she’d been laboring for a full career to hone her ideas. All three leads are perfect in their roles, fully dimensional and complex in their performances. This is a triumph.

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