Rent Swimming Pool (2003)

Somewhat confusing - Swimming Pool review by CP Customer

You think you know what's going on, but at the end...?? It may be wise to watch twice to be sure what is reality and fiction in this film. If you listen carefully you might be able to disentangle who's who. Good performances by the two actress.

The Pool's the Calmest Thing in It - Swimming Pool review by griggs

Watched this expecting something hotter and moodier — sun, sweat, a bit of erotic threat simmering under the surface — and got something stranger instead.

For the first hour, Charlotte Rampling does almost nothing and it's mesmerising anyway. She plays a buttoned-up crime novelist packed off to her publisher's French house to finish a book. Every flicker of irritation at the girl he introduces as his daughter reads like a tiny performance in itself. Ludivine Sagnier turns up as pure chaos — eating, sunbathing, dragging men home at odd hours. The film gets real mileage out of two women invading each other's space, with the pool sitting there like a sun-bleached, silent referee.

Charles Dance bookends the film as the publisher, and his second appearance lands moments before the twist. He tells Rampling her writing needs more incident and less abstraction, right as she's about to deliver exactly that, signposted from a mile off — almost too neat, like François Ozon heckling his own film in advance.

The last forty minutes are the problem. Somewhere past the hour mark, the plot remembers it needs one, and the sharp character study gives way to third-rate Agatha Christie, narrated by Jessica Fletcher, waiting on a trench-coated, cigar-smoking Columbo who never shows. None of it feels original.

The pool's the calmest thing in it. Everything else gets murkier as it goes.

Disappointing - Swimming Pool review by JC

This film started off ok, Charlotte Rampling giving a great performance as usual. However, about half way through it started to lose the plot, so to speak, and the ending was a bit lame and very unbelievable..