The adolescent protagonist of Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, 2007), Marie (Pauline Acquart), strikes a deal with Floriane (Adèle Haenel), the captain of the local synchronised swimming team. Marie will avert parental suspicion by playing chaperone to the older girl's prohibited sexual rendezvous, in return for the opportunity to accompany the team in the pool for training sessions and on the bus to competitions. Water Lilies combines the spectacle of performance (its opening is accompanied by the extravagant ‘Dies Irae’ from Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem [1874]) with the comedy of adolescent inad-equacy (Marie tries to build up her muscles to join the team by lifting boxes of laundry detergent) and the muted disappointment of unrequited desire (Floriane's reciprocation only occurs in moments of strategic necessity). In the first of a pair of scenes that evoke the sensory intensity of this unspoken desire, Marie is granted permission to try on a sparkly ‘synchro’ costume in Floriane's bedroom. Jokingly donning the costume over her clothes in a reverse striptease, she falls onto the bed giggling with Floriane. The promise of attainment (of the costume, of its connotations of inclusion in the group and of parity with Floriane) is sabotaged by silliness. In the immediately subsequent scene, Marie, willing to do anything for attention and proximity, steals a rubbish bag that Floriane has just deposited in a bin. As Marie returns to her own bedroom and draws out a series of Floriane's discarded objects, the impossible physicality of her desire unfolds through sight, touch, taste and smell. The camera tilts in close-up from Marie's inhalation of the scent of a makeup-stained piece of cotton wool, to her gentle caress of a scrunched-up note, to a perishing apple core held tentatively in her hands. The camera moves with the apple back up to Marie's mouth. In a prolonged close-up shot, she chews, winces and then brings the back of her palm up to her mouth as if to retch. Marie's desire for Floriane holds within it both appreciation and disgust, experienced here on a multi-sensory level. The juxtaposition of these two scenes evokes first spectacle and playfulness and then abjection and misguided intimacy.