Swiiming Pool

Lou and I first watched this film in an open air theatre in Rotterdam. These are a great idea for a summer evenings anywhere and it's a shame it isn't done over here because I'm sure they would prove popular. However, they might not work for two reasons. First is the weather and our summer climate - can you guarantee it to be dry/warm enough to sit outside when it gets dark? Secondly is yobbish behaviour. If you can't sit through an ordinary screening without talking, what would it be like outside with mobile phones? Torture. But I digress.

Swimming Pool is the story of a murder mystery novelist Sarah Morton, who is a famous author of a series of inspector novels. Tired of life in London and seeking inspiration for a new novel in a different direction, she accepts an offer from her publisher to stay at his home in in the south of France.

She is an isolated snobbishly conceited English woman who lives alone with her father and one gets the impression she leads a dull existence and lives through her novels and takes the offer of a break in France for some exciting stimuli to give her life a jump start.

It is the off-season in the small town of Luberon, and the slow pace and unhurried lifestyle is working well for her until late one night, when her publishers brash French daughter Julie unexpectedly arrives. Sarah's English reserve is juxtaposed by Julie's reckless, sexual energy and her multiple-partnered lifestyle.

The film is an examination of two peoples lifestyles and the way in which they operate around other people and themselves. Beneath this festers a simmering erotic tension and the film is marked with a heavy use of sex and nakedness.

Swimming Pool is a serious film that is both engrossing and entertaining and well worth tracking down.

I would give this film 8.3 chateaus out of 10.