In film, the audience is often whisked away into a world that is fanciful and themed and is taken behind the curtain to where the story takes place---as observers peering through a window.
Fear of Water is not that at all. In fact, I think it was the intention of the Director, Kate Lane, to let the story sort of tell itself via glimpses, signals and road signs with us, the audience, filling in blanks along the way. That technique does, to some extent, take away the meat from the table, but hey, to my surprise, I have enjoyed many a vegetarian meal and gotten up from the table feeling fit instead of bogged down.
A thanksgiving feast this was not, but a simple lunch of salad and sandwiches.
As we follow our two heroines on their journey of discovery, we see the two mature softly toward becoming adults...Not adults over night or in the click of the fingers, and certainly not entirely into adults, but we catch a snapshot of a few of the moments that will build their future selves and what kind of people they will grow up to be. The magic here is not a complete transformation but a subtle and gentle look at how these two young people gravitate toward each other to heal wounds, fill in the missing flesh and correct the courses that they were inherently upon to a parallel path toward normalcy. As friends? As lovers? you can choose, but if the camera were prying deeper into the story, perhaps we would have learned exactly what did transpire in the row boat one evening. We would have been forced to see the secret that these two lady-childs to women kept from us. It was the binder that cemented their probable life long friendship and who knows if they do not seek each other out later in life to find romance? That is another story.
Suffice it to say that if you like films that not only spell it out for you, but reveal the answer to the riddle to you in all of it's cinematic glory, then this is not the movie for you. Conversely, if you want to have a peek into the true innocence of youth as it transforms into pre adulthood, with a special love affair in bloom for color, then this is a film that you will cherish.
So the ending is not defined and the sexual tension is not visually released...we know that story from countless other quote /unquote Lesbian films.
This is more of a touching and sentimental approach to letting us see the innocence of how two can come together emotionally & sexually without gratuitous nude scenes...well done Ms. Katy Lane.