On the films of Céline Sciamma and what her approach to adolescence has that most coming-of-age films lack.

Sciamma's first three features — Water Lilies, Tomboy, Girlhood — are all about young people at the moment when the world is forcing them to perform an identity they haven't chosen. This is not unusual subject matter. What Sciamma brings that most filmmakers in this territory don't is a refusal to pathologize the performance.

Water Lilies is about a fifteen-year-old girl watching a synchronised swimmer perform femininity in a way that produces both desire and longing. Tomboy is about a child spending a summer in a new neighborhood presenting as a boy without the film ever diagnosing or labeling what this means. Girlhood is about a teenage girl finding belonging in a gang and using that belonging as a form of self-construction.

In all three cases, Sciamma watches her protagonists with an attentiveness that neither judges nor endorses. The camera is close and patient. The editing respects the duration of adolescent experience. The result is a feeling that you are watching young people as they actually are rather than as adults remember or fear them.