Girls Can't Swim

Girls Can't Swim
Film poster
Directed by	Anne-Sophie Birot
Produced by	Philippe Jacquier
Written by	Anne-Sophie Birot Christophe Honoré
Starring	Isild Le Besco Karen Alyx Pascale Bussières Pascal Elso Marie Rivière Yelda Reynaud Sandrine Blancke Julien Cottereau Dominique Lacarrière
Music by	Ernest Chausson
Cinematography	Nathalie Durand
Edited by	Pascale Chavance
Production company	Centre National de la Cinématographie
Distributed by	Haut et Court
Release date	18 October 2000
Running time	102 minutes
Country	France
Language	French
Box office	$69,250

Girls Can't Swim (French: Les Filles ne savent pas nager) is a 2000 French coming of age drama film. It was first shown at the 2000 Montreal Film Festival.

Gwen (Isild Le Besco) is a teenager living in a coastal town in Brittany; Lise (Karen Alyx) is her city-living best friend. They meet up each summer as Lise's family visits. This year's visit is different though - Lise is dealing with her distant father's death, and Gwen has become promiscuous with boys - with the tensions affecting their friendship.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times said "Girls Can't Swim 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."Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, saying "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."