Strange. But I liked it how it left me pondering.

And I want to work as a writer like that too!

Swimming Pool explores some very interesting themes: the differences between youth and age, innocence, sexual awakening, motherhood, solitude, and voyeurism, among others.

The plot is deceivingly simple. Sarah, a writer, is staying at her editor’s house in France so she can work on her next novel. She’s had a great deal of success as a mystery writer, but seems to have hit a wall. She doesn’t want to do another mystery, but she doesn’t know what else to write about.

Enter Julie, the editor’s daughter. She breezes into the house one night like a force of nature. Her first order of business? She uncovers the swimming pool in the backyard. It’s full of leaves, but this doesn’t stop her from peeling her clothes off and swimming in it. She also takes to sunbathing topless and having sex in the living room on a nightly basis, with whatever men she can talk into coming home with her.

Sarah is disgusted by all of this behavior at first, but as time goes by, she becomes captivated by it. She creates a ‘Julie’ file on her computer, and she starts writing again.

But there’s a lot more going on under the surface. What is fantasy? What is reality? Is the movie just a product of Sarah’s imagination? Are Sarah and Julie linked in some way, and if so, how? What the hell is going on?

Francois Orzon, in an interview with Indie Wire, had this to say:

“I don’t want to give you the key. I myself have an opinion about it, obviously — but I wanted to keep the film open-ended and let every viewer imagine what he wishes. It’s a movie that gives viewers the freedom to make their own film.”

So essentially the meaning of the movie is left for you to decipher. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It doesn’t really seem like good storytelling, and it would be disastrous if every director in the world started doing this. But Orzon isn’t every director, and Swimming Pool isn’t an ordinary movie. I found myself thinking about it a lot once I had ejected the DVD, turning the facts over in my mind and trying to make them fit into some kind of coherent storyline. It’s strangely satisfying to do this, and I seriously suggest that you watch the film so you can do the same.

My only complaint is that the DVD features were sparse – just a trailer and a few deleted scenes that didn’t seem to add much. There wasn’t any director’s commentary, which irked me to no end. I would have loved to hear Orzon’s take on the rather bizarre series of events, but no such luck.

Oh, and should you pick up the unrated version, be prepared for a lot of Ludivine Sagnier’s breasts. They should have been given second billing for all their screen time.

I really liked this, partly because it was almost too familiar to me as a prior resident of Provence. The sounds of the house, the cicadas, the warm air blowing through the lavender and across the ominous blue calm of the pool. The inwardly fastidious English writer amongst the picturesque villages of the Luberon, sharing the house with a French girl, was not foreign, but had me gasping with horror (topping up the wine bottle with water aftering taking a swig!). The end was a little too much for comprehension. Subtle in many ways. Addendum: I knew I’d seen Ludivine somewhere before, it was in 8 femmes (a five-star film).

very interesting and what a twist!