DVD
Upcoming Release Calendar
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade
Recent DVD/Video Releases
60
9
xx
Across the Hall
56
Adam
37
Amelia
73
Amreeka
35
Babysitters, The
70
Big Fan
57
Boys Are Back, The
81
Bright Star
71
Bronson
60
Brothers at War
55
Brothers Bloom, The
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
64
Che
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
54
Dare
68
Departures
19
Downloading Nancy
55
Endgame
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
27
Gamer
50
Give Me Your Hand
46
Halloween II
73
House of the Devil, The
94
Hurt Locker, The
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
17
I Hate Valentine's Day
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
83
In the Loop
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
41
Little Ashes
80
Lorna's Silence
33
Love Happens
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
xx
Ministers, The
67
Moon
59
More Than a Game
49
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
28
Pandorum
68
Paranormal Activity
85
Passing Strange
63
Perfect Getaway, A
44
Peter and Vandy
54
Pontypool
35
Post Grad
30
Saw VI
79
Serious Man, A
36
Serious Moonlight
76
Soul Power
40
Spiral
39
St. Trinian's
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
47
Time Traveler's Wife
43
Tru Loved
61
Trucker
47
Weather Girl
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Girls Can't Swim
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 13 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 1 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by: Anne-Sophie Birot
Directed by: Anne-Sophie Birot
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 19, 2002
DVD: September 24, 2002
Running Time: 101 minutes, Color
Origin: France
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Isild Le Besco, Karen Alyx, Pascale Bussières, Pascal Elso, Marie Rivière, Yelda Reynaud, Sandrine Blancke, and Julien Cottereau
An intimate, unflinching look at the intricacies of the relationship between two teenaged girls. (Winstar Cinema)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Ultimately lacks the epic dimension of "Y Tu Mamá También," but its vision of that awkward age when sex threatens to overwhelm everything else is acute enough to make everyone who has been there squirm with recognition.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Paul Malcolm
The film's intimate camera work and searing performances pull us deep into the girls' confusion and pain as they struggle tragically to comprehend the chasm of knowledge that's opened between them.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
"Adolesence can kill you," Birot has said in an interview. In a film that leaves the "you" intentionally vague, moment after moment she shows how.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Sensitive and thoughtful coming-of-age story.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
There is a ton of psychology and inference in this intriguing first feature by French director Anne-Sophie Birot.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
It includes abundant sex and full-frontal nudity, not to titillate but because it's needed to convey the inner sexual turmoil the girls are going through.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Leslie Camhi
Falters when it takes a final, violent turn into melodrama.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Birot is an engaging storyteller who can inspire luminous, spontaneous portrayals, but her ending is so drastic that it feels unearned, a note of bleakness struck merely for its own sake.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Loren King
Despite its shortcomings, Girls Can't Swim represents an engaging and intimate first feature by a talented director to watch, and it's a worthy entry in the French coming-of-age genre.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Leighton Klein
While not all transitions to adulthood are so fraught, there's much truth and no small amount of poetry in Girls Can't Swim.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
It's a cynical way to pass time, the cynicism that comes from being presented with something you've seen a hundred times before.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The phrase "coming of age," when applied to movies, almost always implies sex, but Girls Can't Swim has nothing useful to say about sex (certainly not compared to Catherine Breillat's brilliant "Fat Girl" from last year), and is too jerky in structure to inspire much empathy from us.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it a 7:
In perhaps the film's best scene, Lise was unaware that Gwen smokes now. Sex, and now nicotine, has set the promiscuous and lung cancer candidate apart from the virginal wallflower. Needing an end, going the "American Beauty" route was probably not the way to go. But Isild Le Besco is a delight to watch(clothes on as well as off) as a girl who straddles the line between free-spirit and strumpet. Gwen is very much like Joelle Carter's Josee in "Swimming". Too bad about the end though. You want the two girls to mend or dissolve their friendship without the prodding of a denouement from left-field. In the end, "Girls Can't Swim" is about a father's sublimation of lust for his daughter.
