(2007; Naissance des pieuvres, French) In director/writer Céline Sciamma's uncomfortable coming-of-age film, three adolescent females grope through the labyrinth of anxieties and pain toward understanding their sexual identities.

At a local swimming pool during the summer in a suburb of Paris, Marie (Pauline Acquart), slight of build and breasts, watches indifferently her chubby friend Anne (Louise Blachére) perform with a group of synchronized swimmers; but when she sees the Stade Français water-ballet team execute maneuvers, she's enthralled. Attempting to sign up for lessons and practice, she's told she'll have to wait until September.

In attendance at a swimmers' party with Anne, who's eager but frustrated for a boy's affections (though her idea of saving herself for someone special only involves not kissing), Marie the wannabe makes acquaintance with an attractive, mature-looking Floriane (Adéle Haenel), one of the adept swimmers: "I need someone to get me in." In exchange for letting Marie watch the team practice, Floriane extracts a favor, using Marie as an excuse to get out for a tryst with her boyfriend François (Warren Jacquin).

Allowed to travel with the team (Floriane says Marie's her cousin) and getting to wear Floriane's medal around her neck after the victorious competition, Marie neglects her friendship with Anne ("I do stupid things by myself"), who jealously pursues stratagems to attract François's heedfulness (after he'd accidentally seen her naked in the locker room).

Unpopular with her teammates - one girl accuses Floriane of having "gone over to the other side," by having sex - she levels with Marie, confessing that she's never slept with any boy, when the innocent girl ("Very lucky") refuses to be an enabler of Floriane's further playing the slut: "I only did it to wind up the bitches."

As their friendship develops, Marie's attraction to Floriane increases without bound (she takes home a bag of Floriane's garbage as a keepsake) while Floriane asks Marie to help her lose her virginity, as well as rescue her from jerks, before François finds out she's not sexually experienced. Meanwhile, Anne, accompanied by Marie (on the verge of throwing over her more childish companion), shoplifts a necklace, which she gives to François, who afterward offers it as a gift to Floriane before coming over to her home at night when her parents are away.

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