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May 01, 2008 Web Exclusive By Chris Tinkham

27-year-old French writer-director Céline Sciamma treaded familiar cinematic territory in conceptualizing her debut film Water Lilies, an achingly lyrical examination of teenage social structuring, friendship and desire. The archetypes of a typical teen movie are in place in Water Lilies: there’s the scrawny wallflower (Marie), the chubby extrovert (Anne), the buxom beauty with a reputation (Floriane) and the girl-magnet jock (François). It’s summer in the suburbs (of Paris, in this case), and with temperatures and libidos running hot, what are teens to do with all the free hours of their days? It’s a recipe for a film we’ve seen countless times, but Sciamma, who studied screenwriting at France’s renowned national film school La Fémis, was aware of the trappings, distinguishing her film with unique metaphors (Floriane and Anne are synchronized swimmers), distinct narrative decisions (no parents appear in the film), sparse dialogue and sequences of lustrous pool photography. While at the same time navigating issues of body consciousness and same-sex attraction, Sciamma’s film artfully grasps both the exhilaration and mounting weight of adolescent awakening. Under the Radar interviewed Céline Sciamma days before the Los Angeles theatrical run of Water Lilies.

www.kochlorberfilms.com/Theatrical/infopage.aspx?Id=24

Your screenplay is short on dialogue. How many pages was your final script, and did you know that it was viable for a feature film?

The final script was 100 pages even though there wasn’t much dialogue. It was that long because it was very accurate it the depiction. The film is all about action. I like to, kind of in provocative way, say it’s an action movie. Because it’s not the dialogue that conveys the information, it’s the body language and the situations. Water Lilies is not a movie where the character says that she’s in love. She just eats an apple out of the garbage, and that says it all.

When did you begin writing the screenplay, and when did production on the film begin?

I began to work on the screenplay at the national film school where I was studying screenwriting. It was my graduation script. I got out of school and met some producers two months after. They offered me to direct the film even though I had no experience. I hadn’t directed anything, not even a short film. We gathered the financing in three months. I shot the movie a year after I got out of film school.

Did you and any of the cast attend the film’s screening at Cannes?

I was at the film’s screening at Cannes with the whole cast.

How was that experience?

It was a very intense and scary experience. Cannes can make you or break you. It’s the best and the worst place to show your work. Nobody expected us, nobody knew us. So really the screening was a great moment of anxiety. It tells you all about the future of the movie. So when we heard the crowd cheering it was a total relief.

Unless I’m mistaken, Marie, the youngest of the three girls, is the only one who is directly addressed by name. Was this ambiguity intentional?

You’re not mistaking, it’s actually the case. Even though the movie really has three heads and three hearts, Marie is the main character because we see through her eyes. She’s the observer, we watch what she watches. She’s at the center of the love triangles. She’s the only one who has shots with every single character. Whereas the two other girls are never in the same frame. I wanted the name of the characters not to be an information. I didn’t care that the audience wouldn’t know how they are called. But in the meantime I think that calling someone by their name can be moving. When Floriane first says Marie’s name it’s a recognition of their newborn friendship. When she last says it, it’s an erotic moment.

Here in the U.S., synchronized swimming is an obscure sport that was famously parodied in the 1980s by Martin Short and Christopher Guest on Saturday Night Live. What attracted you to the sport to incorporate it into your film?

Synchronized swimming is not popular at all in France either! It’s really the autobiographical part of the movie. Not that I was a swimmer! But when I was 15 I attended a synchronized swimming exhibition in that very same pool we shot in. I was totally moved by it. Those girls were so feminine when I was still childish looking, they were so accomplished when I merely was a promise, and they were together in a team when I felt so lonely. That moment had that typical teenagehood angst and fascination. I thought that memory was a good starting point for the story. The thing that interested me mostly in the synchronized swimming is the way it tells a lot about the girl’s condition. Synchronized swimmers are soldiers who look like dolls. On the surface they have to pretend that they don’t suffer, with all the makeup and the fake smile, whereas underwater/underneath they painfully struggle with the element. Synchronized swimming is about pretending, it’s about hiding the pain and the sacrifice you go through to be officially gracious. Those two levels you can find in ordinary teenagehood.

What are the challenges of filming synchronized swimming?

The great challenge about filming synchronized swimming is that you have to go past the folklore. Especially because synchronized swimming in cinema has a past with Esther Williams’ water ballets. They were pitfalls to avoid, such as kitsch and choreography. I wanted to film it as a sport, showing the effort, discipline, and the military aspect.

Networks have the luxury of multiple cameras for sports coverage. Were you limited to one camera?

We had two cameras to shoot the ballet, mostly because it’s so exhausting that the swimmers can’t do it several times in a row. So we had to be ready.

Did you have to familiarize yourself with preexisting routines, or were routines choreographed to accommodate the filming?

I picked a team because I liked their routine. I just changed the music, because they were actually performing to a very cheesy tune. Verdi felt more charismatic.

In the U.S., plenty of films have explored same-sex desire, but my favorites have come from Europe, among them Téchiné’s Les Roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) and Moodysson’s Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love). Have you been moved by any American films that revolve around teenagers or that deal with same-sex relationships?

My favorites have come from Europe too. I would agree with the two you quoted. Same-sex relationships in American fiction that really moved me are in TV series, actually: The L Word, Six Feet Under. But I really enjoy the Larry Clark, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Arraki work around teenagehood. And you have the best literature and comic books around teenagehood: Bret Easton Ellis, Charles Burns.

In the writing and making of Water Lilies, did you discover anything about the meanness that teenagers can perpetrate toward each other, conclusions that maybe were not apparent to you when you were that age?

All the feelings that are depicted in the film are recollections. Of course, with the distance it all seems clearer to me now. At the time of my teenagehood I would have been unable to talk about it, to be aware of the meanness, I would just feel it. But I really wanted to make a film in the present. Movies about teenagehood are often wrapped in nostalgia. That I wanted to avoid. I like to think I made the movie for the stomach. It’s about sensations growing into feelings. It’s not an adult look on teenagehood, it’s about experiencing it all over again, recreating the pain and the pleasure.

There is a pivotal sequence where Marie does a favor for Floriane, and it’s set up with a shot of Marie’s torso and Floriane’s shoulder in the same frame, with neither of their faces visible. Did you settle on this shot after attempting others, or was it a composition that you sensed early on?

The story of that frame is quite specific. I’m glad you picked it up. Actually, the frame was set for the characters to lie down. The girls were getting concentrated in their marks and I saw that those positions were beautiful. So I made them stand there and started shooting. But that wasn’t planned. Nobody (cameraman or the actresses) knew I was actually shooting this to keep it.

There are more than a few rituals depicted in the film, from the male swimmers wearing Speedos as masks to the acts teenagers might perform to express sexual desire without engaging in it. Did these characteristics come from your own observations and memory?

The rituals depicted in the films are mostly invented. I didn’t want to portray the rituals of the youth of today, nor the rituals of my own teenagehood. I didn’t want to make a folkloric teen movie. I wanted the film to be a mix of naturalistic grounding and stylization on all levels. The sets, the costumes, the rituals of teenagers.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working for French TV, writing a series. It’s a genre I’ve loved for years but that doesn’t really exist in France. Everything has to be done. It’s very challenging. Then I’ll go back to writing my next feature film.