50
With no adults to add melodrama, the sweet Water Lilies depends on the emotion in its young performers' faces to move forward.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Dismissed in some quarters as trash because it depicts a sexual act (of sorts) between two teenage girls, Water Lilies struck me instead as a hypnotic and wholly convincing look at teen culture from the inside, with all its courage, cruelty and unspoken codes of silence intact.
70
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
The elegant Water Lilies is not about answers but about discovery of self and of others in all its pain and pleasure.
70
The painfully spot-on essence of teen angst meets the spirit of Esther Williams in Water Lilies. First film by gifted scripter-helmer Celine Sciamma nails the aching doubts and offhanded cruelty of 15- and 16-year-old girls.
63
Though Water Lilies endlessly teases the audience with its sapphic subtext and young female flesh, Sciamma seems most interested in showing how extremely cruel adolescent girls can be to each other.
75
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Though the material is familiar, Sciamma has a light touch and avoids many teen-movie cliches.
60
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Water Lilies is a nice, watchable, attractive, minor work. What it lacks is a sense of purpose, a commitment not just to its characters but also to its own reason for being.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Everything in Water Lilies is more guarded, more complex and far more interesting than it seems.
60
The Hollywood Reporter by Richard James Havis
Although a little too open-ended to be wholly satisfying, Water Lilies is still an excellent directorial debut.
Such an engrossing and accurate portrayal of adolescent female queerness, feels like the viewer is being let into a secret world.
This is a wonderfully delicate film with rich subtext, although what lies beneath the surface is often left there, undisturbed. The depth of the experiences depicted in this film isn't fully explored, but it does represent adolescence as excruciatingly confusing in a realistic way.