Disparity In Water Lilies By Céline Sciamma

Born in Cergy-Pontoise, France, Céline Sciamma has been a strong female presence in the French film scene. Now, with three features under her belt, she shows no signs of stopping. She’s gotten awards from international and French festivals such as Cannes, Lumières, César and more. Sciamma’s work primarily revolves around coming of age stories, specifically sexual queer awakenings and gender nonconformity. Sciamma identifies herself as a gay woman and much of her work explores the intersection of the two. She specifically highlights teen and young adult stories because of “the difficult job of being a girl” as Sciamma says. Teen girls are misrepresented and underappreciated and Sciamma’s work attempts to fix that disparity. Her first feature, Water Lilies, follows a young girl who joins a synchronized swimming team in order to be closer to the team captain, whom she has an intense desire for. Sciamma’s second feature, Tomboy, focuses on a young girl who moves to a new neighborhood and is mistaken as being a boy by the local youth and
There are a number of scenes in the film that could be broken down to look at gender politics but I specifically want to look at Laure’s interactions with her mother, her little sister and her friend, Lisa. Lisa is the first to mistake Laure as a boy, instigating the separation of identities. Laure’s mother falls into second wave feminism, she supports Laure’s tomboy attitude but brightens whenever she wears makeup or, later, forces her to wear a dress. On the other hand, Laure’s little sister, Jeanne, may question Laure’s decisions but ultimately, in her childlike innocence, supports her sister and does her best to keep the secret. Lisa falls between the two, open to letting Laure express herself but, at the end of the film, takes time to accept Laure’s ‘true’