In Anne-Sophie Birot’s first feature, the real problem seems to be getting girls to stay put; every crisis ends with someone running off in a snit. Fifteen-year-old Gwen (Isild Le Besco) and Lise (Karen Alyx) are childhood friends. Every year Lise and her family leave Paris to vacation in Brittany, where Gwen’s father is a fisherman. This year, though, it’s different. Something keeps Lise away, and Gwen’s life deteriorates. Her father sells the boat, her self-destructive promiscuity alienates her boyfriend, and when Lise finally arrives, things only get worse.

As it turns out, Lise’s long estranged father has been killed in an accident, and that has sent Lise into a tailspin of sexual confusion, existential doubt, and inappropriate dress (she wears a scuba mask to dad’s funeral, no doubt in honor of the creaky conceit of the film’s title). Taking her friend’s sluttishness and fuck-you attitude as a cue, she hits on Gwen, Gwen’s boyfriend, and Gwen’s father with increasingly melodramatic but inconclusive results. Birot tells the story from each girl’s point of view with a funky authenticity. But when the film nears the heart of the matter — jealousy, sexual ambiguity, and incestuous desire — it loses focus. Girls can swim, but this movie treads water. In French with English subtitles.