Swimming Pool | Review

With a little imagination, Ozon’s packages Agatha Christie, soft-core porn and a writer’s process in a yummy summer treat.

What director Francis Ozon has found in actress Charlotte Rampling is a muse for a screen presence quality that reminds of the late Ingrid Bergman, what we find in his first foray into English language film is more than just lazy days at the pool and a little murder on the side but a film with a subtext which discusses the role of femininity and the place of women in the world of oppressive men.

At first glance Swimming Pool explores the humorous generational clash found in the bikini-less, lover-plenty librated French girl (Ludivine Sagnier 8 Femmes) versus the past-her prime, very stuck-up English female author (Rampling Embrassez qui vous voudrez of detective novels whose creative pen is running dry. Then slowly merging with the second act we watch a charging of her batteries, where we get to see how the fertile mind of a writer awakens with one’s youthful exuberance. When the earplugs get put down and the story frolics with the pleasures of a summer vacation in a semi-empty cottage a John Holmes of the village gets introduced and the sexual tension raises and then defuses for a plot-twisting scenario where murder is on the menu and where the characters are found slowly writing themselves into the story.

Poolside activity is particularly interesting with Ozon’s treatment of the visuals and Sagnier’s lack of clothes; I liked how the summer adventure story gets transferred from the younger to older female seeing the camera pass over their bodies matching the pair’s experience. With a Rear Window inspired viewpoint, Ozon uses the camera shots hovering over the balcony looking down at the author’s subject matter. The film’s score further ads more to the Hitchcock murder tempo then the caricatured characters, however, this doesn’t take away from the fun of the two females who play a tennis match of exchanged glances and words and where their strongest asset is defined by the fine camera shots which add to the whole seduction theme found in the characters of the film and the characters found in her novel.

I wasn’t as impressed by his 8 Femmes murder mystery musical experiment as most critics were, but I find in Swimming Pool the same sort of auteur brilliance that came from his beautifully challenging character study, again with Rampling in Under the Sand. This is a fine summer treat, and a nice break from the on slot of big budget sequels that plaster the theatres.

Rating 3.5 stars