As a critic who sees about 300 movies a year, I can safely assure you there is nothing quite like a coming-of-age film...assuming, of course, you undergo some kind of intense deprogramming that makes you forget about the other 30 or so pictures that told the exact same story.  It's a genre that ranks a close second to fish-out-of-water stories in terms of the most played-out cinematic narratives and doesn't seem to be affected by barriers like language, geography, sex or religion.

Girls Can't Swim is more of the same, and it hails from France, the one country that rivals the United States when it comes to the production of middling stories about teenagers trying to find themselves in this topsy-turvy, work-a-day world of ours.  This time, it's a pair of 15-year-old girls who have been friends for years that bond as they spend summer vacation in the constant company of one another.  The one thing Girls has going for it is that the two main characters don't share any screen time until the film is nearly half over, which works to define the girls separately.

Gwen (Isild Le Besco) is a tall, curvy blonde and the only child of parents who seem more intent on screaming at each other than making sure their kid hasn't become the village floozy.  She has done just that, of course, as any rebellious teen with part-time parents is likely to do, though Gwen's problems are probably more of an extension of her piss-poor relationship with her father, who is never around because of his job.  All of this makes her a moody, miserable mess that can transform from a seemingly well-adjusted girl to a bitch-on-wheels in no time flat.

While Gwen lives in coastal Brittany, her pug-nosed, red-haired pal Lise (Karen Alyx) resides in the city and appears to be slightly more mellow. Lise, the youngest of three, is also missing a father figure, since her dad ran out on the family when she was little.  Shortly after Girls opens, Lise learns her absentee father was killed in an accident, yet feels little loss since she barely knew the guy.  She is, however, surprised at how much the death has affected her mother, but that doesn't stop Lise from wearing several deep-sea-diving apparatuses to his funeral in lieu of the traditional mourning garb.

When the two girls finally meet up in Brittany, it's clear that a lot has changed since the previous summer.  Gwen is much more developed - mentally and physically - and pretty much just wants to find guys to bang.  Lise would still like to pal around with Gwen but instead becomes an increasingly annoying third wheel on her sexploits.  Before long, both of their daddy issues will be brought forth in a manner that did absolutely nothing for me.  Anne-Sophie Birot's directorial debut (she co-wrote the script with Christophe Honoré) isn't so much bad as it is bland, but unfortunately the two words are only an "l" and an " n" away from one another.

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