Sunday, December 3, 2006
the swimming pool
Having failed to persuade myself to buy ties for everyone, I've been knitting all weekend, with occasional pauses to nibble something, have a cup of tea and read stuff online. One gets surprisingly antsy doing so much activity with only hands and arms. I also go absolutely mad during marathon knitting sessions unless I watch tv or a movie. The fare on cable is pretty bad unless one likes sports or infomercials or reruns of movies that, while terrific, were broadcast last week or yesterday. Which brings me to a DVD of The Swimming Pool, a French and British collaboration written and directed by Francois Ozon and starring the still eye-catching Charlotte Rampling. With Charles Dance and Ludivine Sagnier in it, too, the watching is wonderful. It may or may not be a murder mystery but it's definitely about a murder mystery writer who is also a woman feeling scorned and abandoned. There's a great big twist which one almost certainly overlooks or, at least, forgets, until the credits roll and you think a minute and then you go "aha!". Bottom line is that it's a heckuva lot of fun and I highly recommend it. The scenery (the south of France in early Fall) is to die for (no pun intended) and makes you want to buy a ticket right now and go there tomorrow. The characters are somewhat focused on sex (hey, it's a French movie) and the only warning I'd issue is that if you don't like to see parts of bodies you dont' usually see front and center onscreen, you won't like it. As for plot, someone may or may not have been murdered and someone or several someones may or may not have murdered the dead or alive person and, furthermore, may or may not be who he or she seems to be. By the way, some reviews seem not to have gotten the point so if you read a reivew that sounds as if they saw a difficult, weird and ponderous movie, don't believe them and don't even finish the review. The Swimming Pool isn't weird or difficult at all - and you don't want to miss it. It's an absolutely terrific and fun film. And if anyone wants to talk about it in comments, I'd be glad to.
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