Swimming Pool

Rating

Director

François Ozon

Screenplay

François Ozon, Emmanuèle Bernheim

Length

102 min.

Starring

Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle, Jean-Marie Lamour

MPAA Rating

R (For strong sexual content, nudity, language, some violence and drug use)

Review

A mystery writer finds herself embroiled in a real life mystery of her own when she decides to go on vacation to clear her head.

Charlotte Rampling stars as Sarah Morton, the British author of a popular detective novel series, who’s come to the end of her wits. Her fame prevents her from escaping the undaunted fans who seemingly find her everywhere. A woman on the subway identifies her immediately and when she confronts Sarah, she simply states "I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else" and flees by the nearest route. Morton approaches her publisher John Bosload (Charles Dance) with her intense frustration and in his wisdom he invites her to take a sabbatical to his home in France where a largeSwimming Pool forms the basis for her latest novel.

She arrives and immediately begins to collate her ideas into a new novel. The peace is challenged when Bosload’s sultry daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier)arrives unannounced. The tension is palpable as the rigid Sarah becomes infatuated with the free-spirited Julie. Sarah’s intense curiosity leads her on a road to her own self discovery where she must free her mind and explore the strange and unusual, even going so far as to try smoking pot for the first time. Meanwhile, Julie returns the interest and together, they form an unlikely pair.

Rampling is simply marvelous as the archetypal British literary sophisticate. She conjures up the images of a strung-out Jessica Fletcher and a more refined Miss Marple. The audience watches Rampling skillfully take her character from a depressive, passionless spinster to a vibrant, youthful rebel. By her side is the brilliant Sagnier whose sensuous malcontent is filled with life-affirming enthusiasm. We watch her as she seduces one unattractive man after another.

Sarah plies Julie for information about her mother and father, hoping to find some amazing link that will explain all of her suspicions. She wants desperately to finish her book and through the inspiration of this rebellious youngster, she breaks her creative block and writes a novel that is sure to be a best seller.

Director François Ozon never gives the audience the answer, wanting instead for them to guess the solution. Ozon has a certain passion for the unusual. 8 Women was far from traditional and with the intriguing self-reflective nature of the Swimming Pool screenplay (co-written by Ozon with Emmanuèle Bernheim), we find ourselves involved in an absorbing mystery. Unlike other stories of the genre, this one doesn’t end with a detective tidily revealing the solution. It instead ends with a question that forces the audience to think back over the events of the film and resolve for themselves what the real mystery was and whether what we see with our eyes is truly the same as what we can see with our minds.

Swimming Pool won’t appeal to many audiences. It doesn’t wrap itself in a nice bow at the end like many other popular movies. Instead, the film will be embraced by an intellectual community who delights in such mental exercises and will likely develop a small cult following in the ranks of the cineastes. Like its title character, the film takes us on a vacation from the generic and we can leave the theater with a revitalized faith in the art of filmmaking.

Review Written

December 8, 2003