Swimming Pool (2003)
Review by Cold Bacon
 Film Review Archive
Directed by Francois Ozon: "8 Women", "Under The
Sand"
Charlotte Rampling .... Sarah Morton
Ludivine Sagnier .... Julie
Charles Dance .... John Bosload
You have to understand there’s a difference between seeing a movie
and having sex with the girl in it. Because of this subtle but very important difference,
it’s probably best to do something else with your two hours. Swimming Pool
is basically what if you took an Eric Rohmer film, removed half the characters and let
Domink Mol lick the screenplay while Peter Greenaway fondled the camera crew. Then soaked
it in essence of Mulholland Drive and Adaptation and finally, let Francois
Ozon direct it.
Swimming Pool is about a middle-aged English writer escaping to her
publisher’s summer house in the French countryside in order to find inspiration for a
book. When her publisher’s beautiful young daughter shows up, the plot begins to
unfold. And may still be unfolding as we speak. I have to go check it. Excuse me.
The problem with the film is its main characters are fairly two-dimensional. Julie’s
backstory only threatened at being intriguing from time to time. The film needs you to be
captivated by Julie, but Ludivine Sagnier is neither as endearing as Ana Karina, as pouty
as Brigitte Bardot, as fatale as Sharon Stone, or as French as Julie Delpy. Her body is
sensational but her acting is uninspired, although some of this could be blamed on the
screenplay. What about Sarah? Sarah was just a straightforward bitch. Hardly interesting
at all. Basically how I think of J.K. Rowling. And her publisher, Mike or John or whatever
wasn’t even two-dimensional. I can’t believe someone managed to create a
one-dimensional character. But by God they did it. The next rung of characters was better.
Frank the waiter was compelling but I would actually be much more interested in him
outside of the film. Julie’s first boyfriend was definitely amusing with his little
Speedo and his pot belly attitude. Intriguing distribution of body fat, yes. Nicholas
Cage, no. Marcel the gardener was better than my last taxi cab driver, but not the one
before him.
But the best characters in the film were the most peripheral - the little Poltergeist
lady with progeria, for example, at Marcel’s house. Actually, children born with this
rare genetic disorder live to be about thirteen. This lady was just a midget. But
interesting. As was Frank’s happily overweight colleague over the shop window.
“Excuse me now, I have work to do." Hmmm. I wonder what that could be? At one in
the afternoon, in France. Very interesting. I am not kidding. On purpose or not, and
it’s not, what does that say about your film when the best characters have one or two
lines? It says give them more lines.
The film relies on your being a lot more impressed with its plot devices than you end up
being. Like Adaptation, Swimming Pool cleverly blurs the lines between
fiction and ‘the movie’ but unlike Adaptation, it's mostly boring.
Stylistically, the film suffers from too much repetition. I’m talking about boobs
which keep just walking around not being sucked on or anything, a liquor cabinet which
can’t stay shut for more than two seconds and Charlotte Rampling’s fingers,
which, nice as they are, I’ve seen enough of. If I’m going to stare at fingers,
let them at least be Glenn Gould’s and let them be in ice water. The observational
style, showing her plug in the laptop, mixing yogurt concoctions and various other little
details, is at first reassuring but then boring. Julie drinking coffee from a bowl was
funny but only the first time.
As for the ending, apparently, someone forgot to tell Francois Ozon they already did that
in The Usual Suspects. But whatever. That’s fine. But rather than giving the
film new meaning, the ending actually backfires and makes it all seem even less
interesting than I was prepared to say it was.
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