This French antecedent to ‘A Bigger Splash’ is a stylish if somewhat monotonous drama oozing sexual tension as a couple and a father-daughter duo temporarily reside in a summer house.
Review #2,719
Dir. Jacques Deray
1969 | France | Drama | 122 min | 1.66:1 | French & English
M18 (passed clean) for some nudity
Cast: Romy Schneider, Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin, Paul Crauchet
Plot: A couple’s summer holiday is interrupted by the arrival of an old acquaintance and his 18-year-old daughter.
Awards: –
Distributor: Studiocanal
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Sexual Tension; Hidden Motives
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: The Projector Golden Mile (as part of French Film Festival)
Spoilers: No
There is no relation to Francois Ozon’s film, Swimming Pool (2003), even if La piscine shares the same title, but what it shares narratively is with a much later work by Luca Guadagnino called A Bigger Splash (2015), which was essentially an English-language remake of Jacques Deray’s film.
La piscine sees Deray milking the sexual tension between two sets of people—a couple played by Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, both flaunting their tanned bodies, and a father-daughter duo played by Maurice Ronet and Taylor Swift-lookalike newcomer Jane Birkin (fresh from Antonioni’s 1966 countercultural classic, Blow-Up).
The quartet find themselves cooped up in a summer house listening to vinyl, though they spend quite some time in swimwear as they alternate spontaneous dips in the titular pool with poolside chats.
While I enjoyed much more the vibrant energy of A Bigger Splash, the contrast with La piscine’s ‘stillness’ (or to put it less charitably, ‘monotony’) is palpable.
“The first swim of the year always tires you out.”
Deray’s film is decidedly more deliberately-paced though it doesn’t forgo its commitment to style, mostly defined here by how these fashionably attractive characters are shot with a cool, jazzy vibe.
However, there is still an acute sense of stasis in La piscine, which to me doesn’t quite work in the film’s favour, considering that it was intended to have more mainstream appeal than, say, another Delon vehicle, Melville’s Le samourai (1967), where stasis was fundamental to the film’s form and character study.
Also, unlike Ozon’s work, it may not be accurate to describe La piscine as psychosexual even if that could also have been part of its appeal. Still, the actors take centre stage, often seductively, and pull us through a rather sordid tale of deception and jealousy.
Grade: B
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 