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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Daily Archives: April 28, 2006

Swimming Pool: A Sexy, Quasi-Foreign Mystery

Ludivine Sagnier). A tailor-made distraction in human form, the lissome, seemingly carefree Julie couldn’t on the surface be more at odds with the prudish Sarah, who’s bothered as much by her young housemate’s pert breasts as by her drinking coffee from bowls. A feather caught up in the breeze of life, Julie whiles away her time swimming and sunbathing, sometimes in an art-deco bikini but just as often in nothing at all. She also exhibits a rapacious sexual appetite that she sates with the swarthiest of men.


If Julie represents youth’s arrogance and natural, anything-goes inquisitiveness, Sarah proves to be curious too; she spies on Julie, discovers her diary and eventually starts keeping a running sidebar narrative on her computer that she uses to infuse her novel with fresh blood. Against her better judgment, Sarah’s maternal instinct is also triggered when she finds a pair of Julie’s panties in the lawn and Julie doesn’t immediately return home one night. Julie, for her part, eventually comes into clearer focus as a much more complex figure than Sarah ever gives her credit for. So… maybe this odd couple has a few things in common after all.


Swimming Pool’s muted tone hearkens back to a previous metaphysical meditation on love and loss from Ozon — Under the Sand, which also starred Rampling, and told the story of an only marginally satisfied middle-aged woman whose husband simply disappears one day at the beach. On one hand, there’s a fantastic sense of the unknowable to this film, as Julie flings her way from one man to another: what’s the story here, and how is this going to play out? Still, paradoxically, Swimming Pool’s sense of drowsy contemplation seems to portend a curveball or two, a feeling confirmed when, at roughly 70 minutes into the movie, the story’s own galloping impulse for mystery really kicks in.


Concocted by Ozon with his Under the Sand collaborator — novelist and screenwriter Emmanuele Bernheim — Swimming Pool is, I’m willing to bet, influenced to at least some degree by David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. It’s a film that is interested in creativity, identity, divergent personal and professional aspirations and the very real manner in which those components coexist and intermingle within each of us. The difference is that Ozon’s movie is in some ways even more slippery; though slow in tone, it starts out being about one or two very concrete things and then, after a few delicately played twists and turns (shocking isn’t the word, cunning is more like it) becomes something entirely different, something that it clearly always was, but just not to the naked eye.


A pro’s pro, Rampling expertly conveys hidden reserves of jealousy and desire that slowly come bubbling to the surface. Meanwhile, Sagnier (whom American audiences might have glimpsed as Tinkerbell in P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan) is utterly amazing as Julie. Light years removed from her mischievous but juvenile role as the youngest link in Ozon’s musical murder mystery 8 Women (another worthy rental, I might add), Sagnier exudes a voracious sexual energy that makes her the physical, emotional and psychological centerpiece and linchpin of Swimming Pool. As adolescent fear and desperation slowly erode Julie’s brassy, exhibitionistic veneer, Sarah crosses psychological arcs with her; it’s a carefully choreographed dance, and Sagnier and Rampling execute it with perfection.


Sprinkled liberally with life’s intangibles, almost all of Ozon’s movies — and Swimming Pool most particularly — have a deep, engaging elusiveness, the swirl of an involving dream. Auteurs of the American independent scene would do quite well to pay attention to the director’s touch with surface and subtlety; Ozon can stage a skilled, playful interaction with the best of them, but there’s almost always a latent subtext playing in the scene as well, and it’s this very exact and exacting accumulation of details that brings into starker psychological relief the complexity of his characters. Ozon is attentive to their humanity and covertly plumbs their inner psyches. We understand his characters’ dilemmas — whether they’re explicitly voiced or not — sometimes even before the characters do.


For those who found themselves caught up in the aforementioned Mulholland Drive and/or Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s exhilarating Adaptation, Swimming Pool is well worth a dip. Alluring and inventive, though at the same time possessing the understated and relaxed rhythms typified by much foreign cinema, it’s a brilliant and very sexy mystery. During and after, you’ll be lost in thought — a feeling you might not experience that frequently this summer.

United 93

Before bringing his frenetic touch to the spy thriller The Bourne Supremacy, British director Paul Greengrass made a movie called Bloody Sunday, which offered forth a realistic recreation of the 1972 civil rights march in Northern Ireland that devolved into a massacre. (It’s the same incident that spawned U2’s anthemic “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”) In a gut-wrenching merging of style and material, Greengrass explores many of these same themes in United 93, his grief-soaked telling of the one hijacked plane on September 11, 2001, that didn’t reach its intended target.



Frankly incapable of being judged on any level as a regular film — there’s an accompanying tension and trepidation that permeates any viewing, and it’s certainly the quietest audience with whom you’ll ever sit through an opening credit sequence — United 93 nevertheless stands as a singular achievement, although whether it’s one that people will want to re-experience remains to be seen. (Ten percent of its opening weekend grosses will be donated to a special memorial fund).

The story of Flight 93 and its eventual crash-landing in a Pennsylvania field is of course a completely known one, but instead of hiring well-known actors, Greengrass smartly went through a careful audition process — inclusive of meetings with the family members of victims — and cast an ensemble of mostly unknowns (hardcore film aficionados may recognize maybe three or four faces), all in an attempt to make the recreation of the events more believable. He further advanced this delicate agenda by also utilizing many of the flight controllers and actual governmental agents, including FAA National Operations Officer Ben Sliney, on duty that day. This gives United 93 an eerie sense of otherworldly recreation, of sometimes almost being found footage.

While some of the on-board specifics are speculative, much is known, and United 93 artfully establishes the panic of all parties involved, as internecine governmental confusion over precise rules of engagement and just what sort of situation they’re dealing with overwhelms — if only for a few hours — the best of everyone’s professionality and ability. There’s a naturally mounting tension to the chronological timeline, of course, but also some bits that many people might have forgotten, including the fact that the hijacking of Flight 93 took place after the first two planes hit the World Trade Center, and that there was much FAA confusion over the fate of American 11, and whether it had hit the WTC or was still in the air. All of this roiling chaos and uncertainty is abetted by the movie’s claustrophobic sense of space, masterfully captured by Greengrass and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s trademark visceral camerawork and further anchored by a tactfully inconspicuous score from John Powell.

What some will seize upon — more than likely as a general feeling more than anything else — is the breadth of United 93’s scope and how that may on a personal level blunt, if not the movie’s emotional currency, then its “rightness,” let’s say. In cutting back and forth between Flight 93, various air traffic control centers and the military command center, Greengrass juxtaposes the story of the doomed airliner against the frantic efforts of those charge, shifting the heavy bulk of the action to the plane only in the last 35 minutes or so. Many filmgoers may be left wanting more details about the passengers, of whom we learn very little. It’s certainly true that in offering this wider context, we lose some focus and grasp of the putative focal point.

Despite its title, though, this film isn’t “merely” the story of United 93. This tack is somewhat a function of necessity, as certain passengers’ life rights were sold to an A&E telepic, Flight 93, which bows on DVD next week, and others understandably were leery of any cinematic exploration of the subject. To focus more upon or tell the story of only one or two passengers, though, is to risk minimizing the collective heroic and moral stance of those aboard United 93. There’s a saying that truth is found in jest and death, and the latter portion of that sentiment is born out here. While the turmoil of that day marks the film on a certain level as a vicarious glimpse into hell via those that lost their lives, United 93 is also a slowly building collage of dread. Emotionally tough but completely riveting and absorbing in its verisimilitude, United 93 doesn’t suffer an exploitative impulse or frame. It is challenging and demanding filmmaking, not for everyone. But it is honest. (Universal, R, 110 minutes)

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