François Ozon is the most mercurial of the new wave of French directors. His last movie to be seen in South Africa was Eight Women, a send-up of the closed-house murder mystery, gorgeously styled and turned, moreover, into a musical.
Ozon seems to have a penchant for plays and the closed world they represent. He adapted Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s claustrophobic play Water Drops on Burning Rocks into a movie, and his movie Sitcom is an update of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, in which a family dealing with the intrusion of an outsider is examined.
Three years ago, Ozon also made Under the Sand, with Charlotte Rampling, whose iconic presence is probably best-remembered from Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter. Rampling projects a combination of aristocratic hauteur and almost masochistic vulnerability; she is a complex figure perfect for Ozon’s sensibility.
Now Ozon has made another film with Rampling — Swimming Pool. She plays crime novelist Sarah Morton, who seems to be on the verge of plunging into depression. The London she inhabits is flat and dull, and even her fans are a trial to her. An adoring old biddy approaches her on the tube, but Sarah shuns her and pretends to be someone else, before heading for the pub and a double whisky. She feels she has nothing left to say and nothing left to write.
Her high-flying agent, John Bosload (Charles Dance), suggests a writing holiday at his villa in France. Leaving her elderly father behind, Sarah takes the train to Luberon in Provence, and into summer. Here, she can relax and breathe again. She eats lunch in the village, muesli and salads at home, and busies herself with the habitual details of a writer’s life. She starts work on her new book.
And then Julie, John’s daughter (Ludivine Sagnier), glides unexpectedly into view. Now, the contemplative, depressive Sarah is contrasted with this young, joyous free spirit. Julie breaks the reflective calm of Sarah’s world — suddenly there is now loud music and rich food.
And the swimming pool is cleaned so that Julie can make use of it. Water has long symbolised both the unconscious and the “feminine” element; here it is acting as a marker for the changes taking place in Sarah’s soul, and in her interaction with Julie.
Yet all this is underpinned by a feeling of terrible dread. You just know someone is going to wind up dead and blue at the bottom of the pool.
Sarah tries to get on with her writing, but she can’t keep her mind on her work. The young Frenchwoman brings home a string of one-night stands; she seems oblivious to Sarah’s need for peace and quiet. She preens herself poolside. Sarah, meanwhile, starts to pry into Julie’s life.
It is mesmerising to watch the two women circling one another as Swimming Pool proceeds. There is a wonderful scene in which Sarah sneaks downstairs, and, abandoning her asceticism, guzzles some of Julie’s wine and food — and then guiltily conceals it.
There are obvious contrasts between the elder English writer and the beautiful young woman. Ozon has said that Julie’s part was originally planned for a boy, but then he realised it would be interesting to examine a relationship between a younger and an older woman. The film is about the contrast between them, as they both change in relation to each other. While the tricksy denouement may annoy some, Swimming Pool is electrifying to watch.