Even though Water Lilies (or the Birth of Octopuses, as I believe it's originally titled) is not the slightest bit exploitative and even though its director is a woman, I like to imagine the thought-processes behind it involved three French men in berets, smoking cigarettes and talking like Fleur Delacour, and went something like this:

French dude: Mes, amis, I am zinking about ze film.

French dude: Ah oui ... let us make ze film about les lesbiennes.

French dude: Bravo pour les lesbiennes!

French dude: But wait! We must make zese lesbiannes different some ow.

French dude: I have eet!

French dudes: Oui?

French dude: Oui! Let us make zem wet!

French dudes: Superb! We shall make a film about ze wet lesbiannes!

It's quite frankly hilarious premise aside (wet lesbians and synchronised swimming!) Water Lilies is actually a beautifully shot and rather discomforting film, with a dreamy, lingering intensity that promises much but ultimately doesn't quite deliver.

It's a coming-of-age-story about three very different teenage girls in depressed, suburban Paris. I don't know, is there are lot of synchronised swimming in depressed suburban Paris? Anyway, there's Marie, intense-eyed, self-conscious nurturing an obsessive and painful crush on Floriane, the blonde, beautiful (reputedly slutty) captain of the synchronised swimming team. And finally Marie's best friend, Ann, the derided outcast fat girl (needless to say, she's not actually fat, that would be much) desperate for the attention of Floriane's gorgeous boyfriend Francois. It's typical coming-of-age stuff and, bar one surprise with regards to Ann's doomed desire for Francois (well done girl!), always goes exactly where you think it's going to, which is, in itself, slightly disappointing. I mean do we really need any more agonising documentations of how rubbish it is to be a bewildered lesbian in love with a flighty, flirtatiously-bisexual beauty who you know you can never have? I'm sick of running into Angela Crossby time and time again.

The young cast members, however, do manage to imbue their unyieldingly stereotypical roles with an astonishing and compelling degree of conviction. Adele Haenel's Floriane displays just the right amount of insouciance and vulnerability and she's absolutely radiantly, crush-worthy. You can, at least, entirely understand Marie's unhealthy habit of hanging yearningly around the pool. Pauline Acquart is, also, it must be said gorgeous although it's well hidden in lank hair and unflattering clothes and her repertoire of longing looks is impressive considering the film is, to a large extent, comprised of them. The film as a whole has convincingly teenage film, partly as a result of the sheer claustrophobia of it. There's relatively limited array of locations with all but a significant one, creating a sense of restriction and enclosure and there are very few indicators of a specific place or a time or even a life outside the tightly-knit teenage swimming circle, which contributes to the film's dreamy, timeless quality. There are no mobile phones or computers, for example, no parents and the view point is always that of its female protagonists. The boys are a simply a rowdy, interchangeable mass for the most part silent and marginalised, even Francois who is Floriane's boyfriend and Ann's desideratum. It's refreshing to have a film located so comprehensively in the worldview of its female protagonists.

What film does capture is the angst and anguish of adolescence. Despite its subject matter and the quantity of dripping wet girls in swimming costumes it's not a titillating film - sexuality is always tinged with anxiety and desire with awkwardness, and, as an adult, the viewer is confined to an outsider status that occasionally feels uncomfortably like voyeurism. The idea of a film that takes synchronised swimming as one of its central metaphors would have struck me as ludicrous but it works surprisingly well. It's a bizarre sport to say the least, demanding an extraordinary quantity of strength and effort to create a semblance of effortless grace and conformity. Indeed, as far as metaphors for growing up are concerned, I've encountered worse.

I came out of Water Lilies with the sense that it was a beautifully done presentation of an old and already overdone theme but the more I think about it the more effective it seems to have been. Regardless, for a debut, it is a remarkably assured and delicately understated piece of film-making which approaches its themes and characters with sympathy, compassion and just enough irony.