Taglines: On the surface, all is calm.
Swimming Pool is a French-British erotic 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 upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek solitude in order 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 on 18 May 2003, and was released in France a few days later, with a U cinema rating, meaning it was deemed suitable for all ages. 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. It was subsequently released in North America on DVD in an unrated cut.
The film ignited controversy with audiences because of 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 film La Piscine (“The Swimming-pool”), starring Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.
Swimming Pool grossed $10,130,108 in the United States and $12,311,215 internationally for a worldwide total of $22,441,323. It had a budget of €6.1 million (approximately US$7.8 million), meaning that it was a financial success.
Sarah Morton, 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, 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. 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, 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.
Directed by: Francois Ozon
Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Jean-Marie Lamour, Mireille Mossé
Screenplay by: Emmanuelle Bernheim
Cinematography by: Yorick Le Saux
Film Editing by: Monica Coleman
Art Direction by: Wouter Zoon
Set Decoration by: Brice Blasquez
Costume Design by: Pascaline Chavanne
Music by: Philippe Rombi
Studio: Focus Features
Release Date: July 2, 2003
