MOVIE REVIEW

By KEVIN THOMAS, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Anne-Sophie Birot's "Girls Can't Swim" is 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 and may strike American viewers as simply an overdose of French fatalism.

The film is intensely French, which means it is no big deal that a 15-year-old girl is already sexually experienced and openly smokes and drinks. This does not mean she is a mature adult, which is Birot's point. Gwen (Isild Le Besco) is a healthy, exuberant teen who lives with her attractive and loving parents, Celine (Pascale Bussieres) and Alain (Pascal Elso), in a pleasant old house in a resort town along the coast of Brittany.

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It is the beginning of July, and Gwen is looking forward to spending the summer in the company of Lise (Karen Alyx), whose family customarily rents a cottage nearby. But this is not just the summer when the girls will be exploring their blossoming sexual allure, but the one in which everything changes and nothing will ever be the same. To begin with, Alain, who just manages to make ends meet as a fisherman, is hit with disaster when the engine on the old boat he inherited from his father plays out, and he can't afford to replace it. This turn of events places a perfectly natural strain on family life, which Gwen, in her youthful self-absorption, resents.

Meanwhile, in a city some distance away, Lise's mother (Marie Riviere) and two older sisters are hit with tragic news of their own. With the family vacation canceled, Lise takes off to Gwen's home on her own. Unexpected events start exploding like the firecrackers Alain sets off in anticipation of Bastille Day.

What concerns Birot is what has concerned countless French filmmakers before her: the plight of those who follow their hearts without comprehending the full power of emotions and their potential consequences. Birot is an engaging storyteller who can inspire luminous, spontaneous portrayals, but her ending is so drastic that it feels unearned, a note of bleakness struck merely for its own sake.

*

Unrated. Times guidelines: considerable nudity, some fairly clinical sex, and adult themes and situations.

'Girls Can't Swim'

Isild Le Besco...Gwen

Karen Alyx...Lise

Pascale Bussieres...Celine

Pascal Elso...Alain

A Wellspring release of a Haut et Court presentation. Director Anne-Sophie Birot. Producers Philippe Jacquier (Sepia Production) and Yvon Crenn (YMC Production). Screenplay by Birot & Christophe Honore. Cinematographer Nathalie Durand. Editor Pascale Chavance. Music Ernest Chausson. Art director Yvon Moreno. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.