Swimming Pool is a 2003 thriller film directed by François Ozon and starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. The plot focuses on a British crime novelist, Sarah Morton, who travels to her publisher's upscale summer house in Southern France for solitude to work on her next book. However, the arrival of Julie, the publisher's daughter, induces complications and a subsequent crime.

While the film's protagonist is British and both of the lead characters are bilingual, the majority of the story takes place in France – thus, the dialogue throughout the film is a mixture of French and English, which is appropriately subtitled.

Swimming Pool premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2003,^[1] and was released in France a few days later, with a U cinema rating, meaning it was deemed suitable for all ages.^[2] It was given a limited release in the United States that July, and was edited in order to avoid an NC-17 rating due to its sexual content and nudity.

The film also ignited controversy with audiences over its ambiguous nature and unclear conclusion which can be interpreted and argued in various ways – while in France many comparisons were made with Jacques Deray's 1969 movie La Piscine ("The Swimming-pool"), starring Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.

Plot[link]

Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), a middle-aged English mystery author, who has written a successful series of novels featuring a single detective, is having writer's block that is impeding her next book. Sarah's publisher, John Bosload (Charles Dance), offers her his country house near Lacoste, France for some rest and relaxation. After becoming comfortable with the run of the house, Sarah's quietude is disrupted by a young woman claiming to be the publisher's daughter, Julie (Ludivine Sagnier). She shows up one night claiming to be taking time off from work herself. She also claims that her mother used to be Bosload's mistress, but that he would not leave his family.

Julie's sex life consists of one-night stands with various oafish men, and a competition of personalities develops between the two women. At first Sarah regards Julie as a distraction from her writing. She uses earplugs to allow her to sleep during Julie's noisy nighttime adventures, although she nonetheless has a voyeuristic fascination with them. Later she abandons the earplugs during one of Julie's trysts, beginning to envy Julie's lifestyle. The competition comes to the fore when a local waiter, Franck (Jean-Marie Lamour), is involved. Julie wants him but he appears to prefer the more mature Sarah, having struck up a relationship with her during her frequent lunches at the bistro.

An unexpected tragedy occurs after a night of flirting among the three. After swimming together in the pool, Franck refuses to allow Julie to continue performing oral sex on him, once Sarah, who watches them from the balcony, throws a rock into the water. Franck feels frightened and tells Julie he is leaving. The next day, Franck is missing. While investigating Franck's disappearance, Sarah learns that Julie's mother has been dead for some time, though Julie had claimed that she was still alive. She returns to the villa, where a confused Julie thinks that Sarah is her mother and has a breakdown. She eventually recovers and confesses that Franck is dead because Julie repeatedly hit him over the head with a rock as he tried to leave her at the pool. His body is in one of the sheds.

When Marcel (Marc Fayolle) becomes suspicious of the mound of fresh soil where the body is buried, Sarah seduces the elderly gardener to distract him. Julie leaves, thanking Sarah for her help and leaving her the manuscript of an unpublished novel written by her late mother, which she had previously claimed that John made her burn. Sarah returns to England and visits her publisher's office with her new novel. His daughter also shows up just as Sarah is leaving, but is revealed to be a completely different girl than the one Sarah spent the weekend with.

Cast[link]

• Charlotte Rampling as Sarah Morton
• Ludivine Sagnier as Julie
• Charles Dance as John Bosload
• Jean-Marie Lamour as Franck
• Marc Fayolle as Marcel
• Mireille Mossé as Marcel's daughter
• Lauren Farrow as Julia
• Sebastian Harcombe as Terry Long
• Frances Cuka as Lady on the Underground

Ending interpretations[link]

The intentionally ambiguous ending sparked much controversy with audiences. One suspicion is that Sarah had been alone at the villa for the entire time. Ostensibly this would mean that the character of Julie is a total fiction conjured by Sarah for the purpose of her new book – also titled Swimming Pool – which she presents defiantly to Bosload at the end of the film. Ozon himself has stated:

Release[link]

Box office[link]

Swimming Pool grossed $10,130,108 in the United States and $12,311,215 in the rest of the world for a total of $22,441,323.^[4] It had a budget of €6.1 million (approximately US$7.8 million), meaning that it was a financial success.^[5]

Critical reception[link]

The film was well received and earned an 85% "freshness" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with most critics' praise centering on the two leads. Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review and stated that "François Ozon, the director and co-writer (with Emmanuele Bernheim), understands as Hitchcock did the small steps by which a wrong decision grows in its wrongness into a terrifying paranoid nightmare."^[6] Neil Smith of the BBC also praised the film, calling it a "compelling psychological melodrama" and "Hitchcockian thriller."^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Swimming Pool (film)

• Swimming Pool at the Internet Movie Database
• Swimming Pool at AllRovi
• Swimming Pool at Rotten Tomatoes
• Swimming Pool at Metacritic
• Swimming Pool at Box Office Mojo

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