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Poster for Girls Can't Swim

Girls Can't Swim

2000 · 1h 42m · UNRATED Drama
Directed by Anne-Sophie Birot

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Overview

Gwen is a teenager living in a small coastal town. Lise is her best friend, a city girl who comes every year with her family to spend the summer. This year things are different though; at first Lise might not come at all, and when she does it is obvious that Gwen grew up faster than she did.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
71%
Tomatometer
Fresh

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.

Paul Malcolm, L.A. Weekly
Fresh

Birot has succeeded in making a movie that has some laughs, low points and high ideals.

Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle
Fresh

Until its final minutes this is a perceptive study of two families in crisis -- and of two girls whose friendship is severely tested by bad luck and their own immaturity.

John Hartl, Seattle Times
Rotten

I felt sad for Lise not so much because of what happens as because she was captured by this movie when she obviously belongs in something lighter and sunnier, by Rohmer, for example.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh

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.

Loren King, Chicago Tribune

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