Swimming Pool

Reviewed Mar 8, 2006

I was blown away by this incredible film when I first saw it in 2003 – and was no less blown away seeing it again for this return performance. Director Francois Ozon’s work deserves to be better known in this country (the fact that this work is largely in English increased its visibility somewhat). He’s made two movies since Swimming Pool; neither have made it into any significant release over here, and that’s a pity. If you check out this fantastically complex psychological thriller, you’ll realize just how great a pity that is.

Taking a page from one of the most venerable mystery stories — Seven Keys to Baldpate — Ozon places Charlotte Rampling in an isolated, sun-dappled French villa, where she’s come to write her latest mystery thriller. No sooner is she in this setting than its owner’s decidedly wild daughter (Ludivine Sagnier) shows up, completely shattering any notions of a peaceful retreat. What happens next is a seeming mystery story that’s as much psychological thriller (much in the Polanski mode) as it is a mystery — with a mystery that started far earlier than it seems.

There is so much going on in Swimming Pool that it almost overwhelms you. But the film plays fair with the viewer — if you, the viewer, are paying attention. I’ll say this much: Pay close attention to the scene in the subway early in the film. Otherwise, revel in the sheer brilliance of the filmmaking and the fearless performance of Charlotte Rampling that’s at the center of the film. Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, language, some violence and drug use.

— reviewed by Ken Hanke

Original review

Anyone who admired 8 Women, Francois Ozon’s bizarre theatrical conceit of a musical murder mystery, should waste no time in seeking out Swimming Pool, Ozon’s new film — and his first one in English (well, mostly).

Swimming Pool is billed as an erotic thriller, and while it’s certainly steamy, it’s hardly a straightforward thriller. Its roots are clearly in one of the classic stage thrillers, Seven Keys to Baldpate, based on the 1913 novel by Earl Derr Biggers (the creator of Charlie Chan). In that venerable mystery, a writer of detective fiction goes to Baldpate Inn, “the loneliest place on earth,” to win a bet with his publisher that he can knock out a book in 24 hours. The supposedly empty inn turns out to have a seemingly endless parade of strange characters (all possessing the “only” key), and the writer finds himself embroiled in a mystery and, of course, a romance.

Baldpate has been filmed many times. The best version is probably the early talkie with Richard Dix, while the strangest is easily its transformation into the 1983 horror film House of the Long Shadows with Desi Arnaz Jr. (!) and a covey of geriatric horror stars (Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, John Carradine).

Ozon uses Baldpate‘s basic idea to fashion a playful psychological study whose tone actually has more in common with The Swimming Pool, the final (1952) novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart (the original grand dame of mystery thrillers). The protagonist in Rinehart’s novel is a female writer (whatever else anyone changed about Baldpate — including casting Jack Benny in a radio version — no one before ever switched genders), while Rinehart’s work often veered toward casual surrealism, as Ozon’s film certainly does as well.

The director upends his parent model in other ways — notably in making the Old Dark Inn of Baldpate into a sunny villa in the South of France, a locale which is anything but sinister and uninviting. Otherwise, the setup is the same: A book publisher (Charles Dance) offers Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) — a bored, frustrated writer — the use of his supposedly empty villa for the summer so she can try to write something beyond her usual lowbrow thrillers. At first, the scenario seems idyllic — until Sarah is interrupted by an intruder in the night. Armed with a lamp as a weapon, she finds herself face-to-face with Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), her publisher’s wild daughter. The girl settles into the villa, playing loud music, parading around naked, spending most of her days out by the villa’s pool sunning herself and indulging nightly in excessively noisy sex with a parade of generally unattractive older men.

Sarah is at first repulsed by the girl’s actions, then fascinated — her growing obsession becoming almost fetishistic when she cops a pair of Julie’s panties she finds near the pool, and begins pilfering from the girl’s diary as a source for her novel. Soon, different facets of Sarah’s personality are peaking through her British reserve. The author begins to form a bond with Julie, even smoking marijuana with her, which leads to a strange scene when Julie brings home Franck (Jean-Marie Lamour), a waiter at a local bistro whom Sarah has been eyeing herself. This seems to be leading to a menage a trois, but instead yields one of the film’s many surprises — and what appears to be its central mystery. But is it?

To give away more about the plot would be a disservice to the film. Ozon’s use of the classic-mystery form should be respected, even though the director uses it to arrive at a much deeper, almost Polanski-esque, character study. (The diary, the surrealism, the sexual confusion and the way that Sarah becomes more and more like Julie is not for afield from Polanski’s What? and The Tenant.)

In the end, Swimming Pool is an elaborate mind game, with the keys found in its opening scenes. Take special note of the characters on the subway with Sarah as she goes to see her publisher — and not just the telling encounter when one of her aging fans recognizes her and is brushed off with, “I’m not the person you think I am.”

And yet, this is a mind game with a good deal on its own mind. Sarah and Julie’s borderline-lesbian attraction has unusual depth, and plays with the very nature of identity. Sarah’s own hidden side is not the only one on display — the film implicitly questions how much anyone ever really knows about another person; everyone and everything in Swimming Pool has its secret side. We are never given complete characters — only the kind of hints we would receive about them in real life.

Finally, this is a film about the creative process, and the fine line between the life of the mind and real life — and where and how the two intersect. The slowly developed details in this unusual movie — its nonstop nudity (Rampling’s as well as Sagnier’s), for instance, and its tendency to merely suggest answers rather than spell them out — makes it feel almost like a throwback to the more experimental films of the early 1970s.

Swimming Pool may ultimately frustrate viewers seeking an easy movie or a straightforward thriller, but it will nonetheless linger in the mind long after you leave the theater.

— reviewed by Ken Hanke