Posted: 07/18/2003

Swimming Pool

(2003)

by Hank Yuloff

A pool worth wading in.

Immediately after the screening of Swimming Pool, the theater was abuzz with conversation. The last time I heard that kind of buzz was in last year’s Lovely & Amazing where everyone was incredulous how bad the movie was. This was a different kind of buzz. A good buzz. A buzz where there were three or four or five different interpretations of the movie that we just saw. What did we see? Was it, as it seemed on the surface, a murder mystery involving our heroine? Did we just see an impostor duping our heroine into believing she was the daughter of her publisher? Or were we just witnessing the imagination of the heroine of the movie?

These are the questions that led one man to stand up and say “If anyone can explain that movie, I will be outside the theater?” As it turns out, he didn’t accept my explanation. But that is the fun of movies…. And its why you should go see Swimming Pool - to figure out this whodunit for yourself.

My opinion is that we just witnessed the writer/heroine Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) writing the next in a series of murder mysteries that have made her famous in England. The movie opens with Morton going to see her longtime publisher (and part-time lover?) John Bosload (Charles Dance from Gosford Park). She is in a funk and he offers her his home in France for a vacation. What follows is 10-15 minutes of what must be the most boring movie I have ever seen as we witness Morton travel to the house and settle in. We see her unpack, stir up some yogurt, call her father, and sit in a cafe and order tea. Even the swimming pool for the house was coverd. Where was the tie in to the movie title? There HAD to be more than this.

Enter the “more.” Bosload’s French daughter Julie arrives in a whirl of sexual energy rarely witnessed in US films. The look of the film entirely changes as she enters the house. Where Morton is the proper English woman, Julie is the free-spirited French girl completely in tune with her body and knowing what boys like. French actress Ludivine Sangnier plays Julie and is smoking hot. She is about to play the part Tinkerbelle in a 2003 remake of Peter Pan. That ought to give little boys something to “think” a about for a long time.

It is this entrance where I feel we go into Morton’s imagination and it is Julie’s escapades that are the basis of the book we are watching appear. I can’t go to much farther into the plot without telling you the kicker. Actually, I think we are watching Morton write two books during her vacation - a love story in which she wishes she and Bosload could be together, and the second is the murder mystery that she will deny him as he denies her. Hint? How interesting that Bosload has a French daughter named Julie and an English one named Julia.

Kudos to writer/director Francois Ozon for giving us a movie that truly lives up to the tag line of “diving into this summer’s sexiest mystery.” Extra kudos for hiring Charlotte Rampling for the lead role. She had a very level tone throughout the movie and we could easily see her as the stoic Englishwoman who had a heart of mystery writer hidden completely underneath. Sagnier may be the one showing her breasts as often as Jennifer Connelly in the 90’s or Phoebe Cates in the 80’s, but the 58-year-old Rampling was willing to show off her bod in the same flick and it was just great.

Go take a dip in the nice cool water of Swimming Pool.

Hank Yuloff had to stay seated for 10 minutes after the movie to avoid embarrassment. He said he wishes that last year’s Swimfan was as good as Swimming Pool. Oddly enough, people went to that movie for the “hot sex” that never appeared and will probably miss this one which is filled with it.

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