Girls Can't Swim (2002)

71% of critics liked it
(34 reviews)
38% of users liked it
(939 ratings)

Charlotte Silvera's Girls Can Get Away With Anything is about a young girl who acted in a film. Eight-year-old Judith (Thylda Bares) was plucked from everyday life to act in a film that was made in Paris. After returning home from the experience, she finds that her parents' marriage is on the rocks.… More Charlotte Silvera's Girls Can Get Away With Anything is about a young girl who acted in a film. Eight-year-old Judith (Thylda Bares) was plucked from everyday life to act in a film that was made in Paris. After returning home from the experience, she finds that her parents' marriage is on the rocks. She makes her way back to Paris with her friend Nora (Nora Rotman), and the two of them do what they can to survive. Girls Can Get Away With Anything was shot on digital video and was screened at the Paris Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 37 min.
Directed By: Anne-Sophie Birot
Written By: Anne-Sophie Birot, Christophe Honoré
Genres: Drama, Art House & International, Comedy

In Theaters: Apr 1, 2001 Wide
On DVD: Sep 24, 2002
Studio: Winstar

Critic Reviews

Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle
Birot has succeeded in making a movie that has some laughs, low points and high ideals.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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.
Loren King, Chicago Tribune
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.
Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News
Compelling, beautifully photographed French import.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
A typically observant, carefully nuanced and intimate French coming-of-age film that is an encouraging debut feature but has a needlessly downbeat ending that is too heavy for all that has preceded it.
Leighton Klein, Boston Globe
While not all transitions to adulthood are so fraught, there's much truth and no small amount of poetry in Girls Can't Swim.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
An overly melodramatic but somewhat insightful French coming-of-age film ...
Paul Malcolm, L.A. Weekly
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.
Brent Simon, Entertainment Today
The heedless impetuousness of youth is on full, irritating display in [this] meandering and pointless French coming-of-age import from writer-director Anne-Sophie Birot.
Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
...a well-observed and disturbing little movie
John Hartl, Seattle Times
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.
Paula Nechak, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The story ultimately takes hold and grips hard.

Read all 12 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Luke B

Two best friends that have been separated look forward to spending the summer together. All's not as well as it first appears though. Gwen is a confused girl who uses her sexuality to embrace some sort of acceptance missing from her mother and father. Lise is emotionally… More
Two best friends that have been separated look forward to spending the summer together. All's not as well as it first appears though. Gwen is a confused girl who uses her sexuality to embrace some sort of acceptance missing from her mother and father. Lise is emotionally repressed, even being told not to cry after her father's death. It's a film that captures those awkward moments of youth, friends one minute and then arguing the next, but never really explores them. The film keeps the audience interested with the different twists and turns but mostly it is how each character deals with situations that become the most exciting part. Gwen's father is the most conflicted of all characters as he drunkenly tries to do what is right for his family and get in his estranged wifes good books once again. At the same time he is also trying to be a strict father to a promiscuous daughter and a father figure to a girl who has lost her own. Not everybody, but certainly for those who like slightly dark and awkward cinema.