La piscine (1969) Reviews

• Not flawless but still a classic

  AristarchosTheArchivist2002-05-30

  This film about surface and inner passion (derangement, fear, etc...obviously symbolized by the pool) is a pleasure, mostly through the performances of Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. Most of the plot lies under the surface and there are many scenes where one must read between the lines to understand where everything will lead to. Okay, the film could have been a bit shorter, but the actors in my opinion really make up for it. We've seen everything now in the movies - but still, the opening sequence is one of the hottest scenes ever filmed. I cannot explain, see it yourself.

• From Nowhere to Somewhere?

  ilpohirvonen2011-10-21

  La piscine or The Swimming Pool is a French crime film, directed by Jacques Deray, who is known as a master of crime, and written by Jean-Claude Carriere; a long time companion of Luis Bunuel, for instance. La piscine isn't necessarily the most accessible French crime film but I would say it is one of the best, at least from the 1960's. It is an erotic, Antonionian film characterized by French existentialism. Although, it is not a perfect film, by any means, it is a surprisingly captivating and intriguing study on modern life as well as on alienation from the world and the society; loneliness, anxiety, love and freedom. The absurdity of being and the meaninglessness of life, how, in the end, nothing really matters. The story happens somewhere in the French Riviera, where a couple is spending their holiday at a luxury château, borrowed from their friends. During the opening credits, we see reflections of nature on water: images of birds and trees. After the credits, the camera rises up and the water surface turns out to be a swimming pool, next to which there lies a man -- an insightful shot of the vacant and anguished life of the bourgeoisie. Everything was a lie; beauty and the happiness of life were only elusive reflections -- which happens to be the leading theme of Deray's film. Soon we hear a woman shouting "Jean-Paul," and the man turns out to be Alain Delon. The woman (Romy Schneider) swims across the pool, comes to the man and they start kissing, fiercely. The physic happiness of this married couple is almost perfect. But details reveal pressures that begin to erupt, slowly, beneath the surface. In order to resist this anxiety, they make up the most shallow things for them to do and, therefore, invite a friend of theirs, Harry who surprisingly brings his 18-year-old daughter (Jane Birkin) with him. At a surprise party -- that resembles the party of The Night (1961) by Michelangelo Antonioni -- the pressures lead to tragic consequences. La piscine strips seemingly beautiful and happy people down from their illusory facade. Jean-Paul turns out to be a failed writer whose fragile ego hides mysterious cruelty in it. On one level, he resembles Camus' Mersault as an apathetic and disregard man who has lost his lust for life. His wife, Marianne (Schneider) is, in turn, a prisoner of her emotions and is unable to free herself from the chains of her husband. Harry is good-looking and wealthy but, in reality, all of his relationships are elusive and mendacious. Nobody cares about him. His daughter, Penelope (Birkin) is a beautiful young woman who arises to her femininity but finds it hard to compete with Marianne. Jacques Deray relays a competitive, jail-like vision of the lives of these characters. We see them behind bars, pillars and windows; trapped in an unending rat race. They are captivated like wild beasts, who are ready to kill each other at any second. Furthermore, all the characters are spying on each other: Jean-Paul keeps an eye on Marianne and Harry, for he thinks that they might have an affair. Harry, on the other hand, spies on Jean-Paul and Penelope because his juvenile father instincts can't bear a contestant. Marianne is also spying on them, because she thinks that she might lose the competition of Jean-Paul to a younger woman. In the name of existentialist film, La piscine begins from nowhere and ends in somewhere which is quite the same. So why watch a film where nothing happens? Because, on the other hand, everything happens. Why read Kafka and watch Tarkovsky? For the very same reason. Although, La piscine is not a masterpiece, I would recommend it as an insightful film about loneliness and the illusion of idyllic life.

• France has never looked more beautiful

  lazarillo2007-07-26

  An incredibly attractive bourgeois couple (Romy Schneider and Alain Delon) are luxuriating in an idyllic French villa when they receive a visit from an old friend of the husband and old flame of the wife (Maurice Ronet) who had actually first introduced them to each other. Their visitor is accompanied by his temptingly nubile 18-year-old illegitimate daughter (Jane Birkin). Infidelity, jealousy, and eventually murder ensue. This film in some ways resembles the emerging Italian gialli thrillers(especially the early ones with Carrol Baker and/or Jean Sorel), but it is much more staid and psychological and less over-the-top than the Italian films. And of course, it also fit squarely in the tradition of French thrillers somewhere between "Diabolique" and Claude Chabrol. The three leads are very good, but Jane Birkin is pretty miscast--she was too old for this role and seemed to be trying to overcompensate by running and skipping around, acting more like a 12-year-old girl than an 18-year-old one (and the result, needless to say, is pretty bizarre). Birkin also tragically keeps her clothes on (although she does spend most of the movie modelling various bikinis), but the equally gorgeous Schneider more than makes up for it. Ironically however, the major flaw in this movie is that the four principals are all SO glamorous and beautiful that it's hard for us normal folk to relate or sympathize with them.Schneider and Birkin would appear together again with better results in "Love at the Top" (where the latter more than makes up for her regrettable lack of skin here). I suspect this movie not only partially inspired the likes of Claude Chabrol, but also the very recent sexy French thriller with same name ("Swimming Pool" in the English-speaking world) in which Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier seemed to be respectively channeling the erotic spirits of Schneider and Birkin. One thing's for sure, France has never looked more beautiful than it does here.

• Pool of conscience

  mim-82013-06-29

  This fine French crime drama, is not appreciated as it should be. The cast may be the reason, but there is no one, that comes to mind of contemporary French actors, at the time, that could have added something more to this. The centerpiece of this tale, of moral and emotional decadence is the swimming pool by beautiful villa, somewhere near Saint-Tropez and it radiates summer passion, it's turquoise waters filled with guilty conscience, calling for trouble between three old friends and lovers. Burden each of them carries, would lead to crime even without "sweet Jane" stirring it up to boiling point. Her presence is so light and she almost appears as a mirage, in between scenes of old passions, lust and grudges not forgotten. The film is everything but slow paced and boring. There is no surplus scene, and I can't imagine how it could be done differently. Of course such films in general are not for audiences of ready-made movies, but for those who will savor Jacques Deray's fine direction, and beautiful cinematography of Jean-Jacques Tarbès. They did a fine job in submerging a willing viewer into exquisite beauty of Romy Schneider, Alen Delon's cool in portrayal of insecure, troubled man that finds his life utterly pointless, Maurice Ronet's subtle acting performance of a successful composer who is afraid of his success, and Jane Birkin's girlish naiveté, ruffle the pool of love and hate. Interraction between Schneider, Delon and Ronet adds another level to it, and the story glides well with every scene serving the story of superficial, emotionless people trapped in their small worlds, in witch they are suffocating. Beautiful film, worth every minute of your time, and not just in cold winter months.

• Superficial and slow-moving, but provides a certain nostalgia

  allyjack1999-08-06

  The movie is languid and superficial and slow-moving but that's generally fine, if you feel like revisiting one of those archetypal, now almost forgotten, mildly (extremely mildly) titillating flicks which used to show up (dubbed) in the Adults Only slot on Friday late-night British TV in the late seventies. The earlier sequences glisten with tanned flesh, against which the slowly building tensions (Ronet and Schneider's past affair; Delon's attraction toward the daughter; Delon's relative failure as a writer and his realization that Ronet doesn't really like him) sometimes seem almost resonant. The movie becomes merely formulaic once it has to tie up the strands of the murder though - the only question being whether Schneider will stay with Delon or not, and it's clear at the end that this amounts to little more than the flip of a coin. Neither the writing nor the acting in the later stretches is sufficient to make very much out of this game of psychological cat and mouse.