Swimming Pool (2002)
Country: FR/GB
Technical: col 103m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle, Jean-Marie Lamour
Synopsis:
A depressed writer of detective fiction takes up her publisher's offer of his house in the south of France in which to recover her creativity. Once there, and embarked upon a newly personal project, she is interrupted by her host's wild daughter who does, however, provide her with meat for a new detective novel.
Review:
Delicious mix of thriller, sexual study and psychology typical of its creator, with its star relishing a further rejuvenation of her persona and the young newcomer from 8 Women ringing the changes in a sizzling hot turn as the voracious Julie. The suggestion at the end that the whole intrigue is but a figment of the author's fevered imagination may strike some as an exasperating cop-out, but others may have had their suspicions raised well before then by the director's upping of the ante. It is in fact the pay-off in a nonchalantly effective study of the creative process where the swimming pool is a metaphor for the writer's blank page and the setting for no end of cinematic references.
Country: FR/GB
Technical: col 103m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle, Jean-Marie Lamour
Synopsis:
A depressed writer of detective fiction takes up her publisher's offer of his house in the south of France in which to recover her creativity. Once there, and embarked upon a newly personal project, she is interrupted by her host's wild daughter who does, however, provide her with meat for a new detective novel.
Review:
Delicious mix of thriller, sexual study and psychology typical of its creator, with its star relishing a further rejuvenation of her persona and the young newcomer from 8 Women ringing the changes in a sizzling hot turn as the voracious Julie. The suggestion at the end that the whole intrigue is but a figment of the author's fevered imagination may strike some as an exasperating cop-out, but others may have had their suspicions raised well before then by the director's upping of the ante. It is in fact the pay-off in a nonchalantly effective study of the creative process where the swimming pool is a metaphor for the writer's blank page and the setting for no end of cinematic references.
Country: FR/GB
Technical: col 103m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle, Jean-Marie Lamour
Synopsis:
A depressed writer of detective fiction takes up her publisher's offer of his house in the south of France in which to recover her creativity. Once there, and embarked upon a newly personal project, she is interrupted by her host's wild daughter who does, however, provide her with meat for a new detective novel.
Review:
Delicious mix of thriller, sexual study and psychology typical of its creator, with its star relishing a further rejuvenation of her persona and the young newcomer from 8 Women ringing the changes in a sizzling hot turn as the voracious Julie. The suggestion at the end that the whole intrigue is but a figment of the author's fevered imagination may strike some as an exasperating cop-out, but others may have had their suspicions raised well before then by the director's upping of the ante. It is in fact the pay-off in a nonchalantly effective study of the creative process where the swimming pool is a metaphor for the writer's blank page and the setting for no end of cinematic references.