Swimming Pool (DVD)

...dips in the (nicely photographed) swimming pool, sunbathing at poolside or tangling in bed (or other less cozy loci) with one of a string of mostly anonymous males, none of whom could be said to suffer from the condition of being too attractive.

Mr Ozon plays up the contrast between the two women, highlighting Julie's provocative actions against Sarah's frustrated avoidance. Julie is garrulous and sexually uninhibited where Sarah is ...
...of the day. Thus we have a cardboard classic conflict that exhibits no genuine tension, never comes to a head, nor figures in what happens next. A grave and unforeseen turn in the plot causes Sarah and Julie to switch places, so to speak, with Sarah now taking charge of the situation and Julie becoming subdued. The momentum never grows to a proper pitch, and what little there is is quickly extinguished by a non-sequiturial detour that offers, for ... more

Of the few films I've seen by French director François Ozon, it has been more miss than hit with me so far. I was intrigued by 'Under the Sand/Sous le sable' (2002), the stark yet strangely moving portrayal of a middle-aged woman who finally comes to terms with her husband's sudden and inexplicable disappearance while on holiday at the beach. It was an interesting film that played like an open-ended Hitchcockian mystery.

The only miss for me until now was the much-lauded ' 8 Women', a musical murder mystery farce that nonetheless failed to deliver on all counts, despite the game presence of some high wattage French stars like Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Emanuelle Béart.

Now comes 'Swimming Pool', a film pretending to be a mystery thriller that essentially makes much ado about…nothing. The tale centres on what happens during a holiday spent by a successful British crime fiction writer Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) at her publisher's lovely digs in the Luberon region in Provence. Morton has writer's block and needs some R&R to get her groove back. She finally does break through the block once she settles in, delighting in the peaceful retreat. This doesn't last too long, for soon she is surprised by the arrival of another occupant - and it's none other than her publisher's nubile teenage daughter, Julie (Ludivine Sagnier). Julie promptly annoys Sarah with her penchant for noisy partying and her wanton sexual ways (both involving only one man at a time, usually much older than herself).

About halfway through the film, one starts to worry about Julie's dermatologic health, as we witness gazillions of UV rays in nearly every scene bearing down upon her oft-bared skin. Julie spends most of the film with hardly a stitch on. She preoccupies herself with dips in the (nicely photographed) swimming pool, sunbathing at poolside or tangling in bed (or other less cozy loci) with one of a string of mostly anonymous males, none of whom could be said to suffer from the condition of being too attractive.

Mr Ozon plays up the contrast between the two women, highlighting Julie's provocative actions against Sarah's frustrated avoidance. Julie is garrulous and sexually uninhibited where Sarah is circumspect and sexually repressed: exhibitionism and voyeurism are the order of the day. Thus we have a cardboard classic conflict that exhibits no genuine tension, never comes to a head, nor figures in what happens next. A grave and unforeseen turn in the plot causes Sarah and Julie to switch places, so to speak, with Sarah now taking charge of the situation and Julie becoming subdued. The momentum never grows to a proper pitch, and what little there is is quickly extinguished by a non-sequiturial detour that offers, for whatever it's worth, the opportunity for Mr Ozon's slim and fit older star to go nekkid in a suggested sexual encounter that seems to have come out of nowhere.

Matching the vacuous plot are embarrassingly sophomoric instances of acting by all concerned. Not one actor here will take pride in having 'Swimming Pool' included in their acting résumé. Nor should they. Ms Rampling, once an English sexpot in the Seventies (more recently, she did fine work as the wife in Mr Ozon's 'Under the Sand'), moves stiffly through the film with the corners of her mouth fixed firmly southward, overdoing the uptight English writer bit. She brings neither depth nor substance to the character. Meantime, Ms Sagnier takes her devil-may-care Julie to silly, undisciplined extremes. I had to force myself to see the film through to the end for completeness' sake; I couldn't give a freaking damn about what would happen to either of these wholly unsympathetic and irksome one-dimensional characters.

And just when you wonder how the already diverted story line will finally resolve itself, Mr Ozon decides to chuck the whole thing and leave matters to dissipate. Then, just for good irritating measure, he slips in a subtle plot twist near the end. I wasn't prepared for the twist, which isn't saying that it did the film any good. It only convinced me that everything that came before was completely dispensable, empty of meaning, and wholly unnecessary, despite the script's feeble attempts to make the distortion in the narrative seem more significant to Sarah's character than it really is. In short, the entire film was a gratuitous exercise in - I don't know - mindless and soulless soft-core porn filmmaking, I suppose. I still can't find a good reason for this film to exist.

So pretend that it doesn't and don't waste your time on this pool-sized piece of nonsensical dreck. Unless you enjoy spending a couple of hours with some tedious and unlikeable characters, I'd ask you to steer clear of this sorry excuse for a film. You'll thank me for it.

(Although one star decorates the title above, my real rating is a flat zero stars - unheard of in my ciao film rating history.)
 

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