Swimming Pool (2003 film)

Sarah Morton, a middle-aged English mystery author based in London, who has written a successful series of detective novels, is experiencing writer's block that is impeding her next book. Her publisher, John Bosload, offers her his country house near Lacoste, France, for some rest and relaxation. Sarah takes him up on the offer, hinting that she hopes John may visit. After settling into the spacious, sun-filled house and meeting the groundskeeper, Marcel, Sarah finds her quietude disrupted by a young woman claiming to be John's daughter, Julie. She arrives late one night explaining that she is taking time off from work herself. She eventually tells Sarah that her mother used to be John's mistress, but that he would not leave his family. Julie's sex life consists of one-night stands with various 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 sleep during Julie's noisy sexual encounters, but develops a voyeuristic fascination with them, abandoning the earplugs during one of Julie's trysts. Sarah sneaks into Julie's room and steals her diary, using it in the novel she is working on. The competition comes to the fore when a local waiter, Franck, is involved. Julie is attracted to 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 is watching them from the balcony, throws a rock into the water. Franck tells Julie he is leaving. The next day, Franck is missing. While investigating Franck's disappearance, Sarah is told that Julie's mother died years earlier, though Julie had spoken of her mother as if she were alive. She returns to the villa, where a confused Julie thinks Sarah is her mother and has a breakdown. Julie eventually recovers and confesses that Franck is dead after she 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. When Marcel becomes suspicious of the mound of fresh soil where Sarah and Julie have buried Franck's body, Sarah seduces him to distract him. Julie leaves, thanking Sarah for her help and leaving her the manuscript of an unpublished novel she claims her mother wrote, which she had previously said John made her mother burn. Sarah uses the mother's manuscript in her novel. Sarah returns to London and visits John at his publishing office with her new novel, titled Swimming Pool, which she anticipated he would reject, so she had it printed by another publisher. His daughter, Julia, arrives just as Sarah is leaving, but is revealed to be a different person from the girl who came to John's house in France. == Cast ==

Ozon has said: On the DVD release there are 12 minutes of deleted scenes which run into each other, with shots of Sarah walking around, visiting landmarks, writing, and so forth. Julie is nowhere to be seen in the footage. ==Production==

Development When co-writing the screenplay for the film, Ozon was partly inspired by his own experiences with journalists asking him about his own writing, and he intended to write a story about a writer's internal creative process. "The French press can be very aggressive and jealous... I was tired of journalists always asking me, 'Where does your inspiration come from?'", said Ozon. "I wanted to tell of my way of working and my process of creation. I had the idea of telling this through the character of an English writer, where I could talk about something very intimate, while still hiding myself." In order to play the character of Julie, Sagnier was fitted with blonde hair extensions and lost approximately . Rampling further commented that the building of the character was a collaborative effort with Ozon. with some shooting taking place in London. ==Release==

In September 2002, UGC Films acquired Swimming Pool for distribution in the United Kingdom. It was announced in December 2002 that Focus Features had acquired distribution rights in North America. Swimming Pool premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival before opening in France on 21 May 2003. It opened in the United States in a limited theatrical release on 2 July 2003, and in the United Kingdom on 22 August 2003. Home media Focus Features released the film on DVD in North America in January 2004 in both R-rated and unrated editions. In 2019, StudioCanal released a Blu-ray edition in Germany, while a South Korean Blu-ray was released by Ara Media in 2021. While a North American Blu-ray has not been released, the film has been made available for digital purchase in high definition through Universal Pictures Home Entertainment's retail site Gruv.com. == Reception ==

Box office Swimming Pool grossed $10.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $12.3 million in other territories (including $4 million in France), for a worldwide total of $22.4 million, During its opening weekend in France, the film ranked number 2 at the French box office after The Matrix Reloaded. A. O. Scott of The New York Times also wrote favorably of the film, noting that "Ozon is as perverse as he is resourceful, so he slyly turns his delicate study in generational and cross-cultural sexual rivalry into a suspense thriller. There is a mystery lurking in Julie's past, a dead body in the pool house, a wizened dwarf all dressed in black: omens, premonitions, suspicions that things are not what they seem." Sarmad Iqbal of the International Policy Digest wrote that the film's "intriguing yet mystifying mix of erotica and thriller set in a part of France that is a far cry from bustling Paris makes you fall in love with it. It is not just the plot, the setting and the way actors have immaculately performed their roles will make you shower praise on this film but also the soundtrack by Philippe Rombi". Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times called film's director a "master of mood", while Varietys David Rooney called the film a "sophisticated [and] unpredictable mystery". The Oregonian critic Marc Mohan praised the film, writing: "In its own slightly disturbing way, this psychological thriller serves as an absorbing diversion without sapping brain cells—almost the perfect summer movie for smart people." Anthony Quinn of The Independent was less impressed by the film, awarding it a two out of five star-rating, noting that the tension between the two leads is "nicely poised" but criticizing the film for its lack of shock value and suspense. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian made similar observations, summarizing: "It's well performed and everything looks terrifically stylish and elegant, but the movie is let down by an absurd ending, allegedly about creativity, imagination and the writing process. It simply leaves the audience with the uncomfortable feeling that their attention has been trifled with for an hour and a half." Accolades == References ==