Synopsis: Girls Can't Swim is a bracing trip into the exciting and brutal adolescence of two French girls. Gwen (Isild Le Besco) is dismayed that her best friend Lise (Karen Alyx) can't join her for their usual joint summer vacation. Fed up with her bickering parents--in particular her erratic, hard-drinking father--Gwen seeks solace in the arms of local boys. But what Lise hasn't told Gwen is that she can't come to the coast because her estranged father has just died in a car accident. Though he hasn't been part of her family for many years, his death sends Lise's mother into a nervous breakdown. Lise finally runs away to see Gwen, but they've become so out of synch that the collision of their heightened emotions leads to disaster.