The Haute Critique

Swimming Pool has one of those indie posters you pass at the Landmark Theaters… and keep going. Indie Cinema is for avant garde or niche subjects and this poster art looks decidedly mainstream.

Too young to be a woman and too old to be a girl, she is basking in the sun in a bikini. Describing itself as a sexy mystery still isn’t enough to seduce.

Late nights, and the siren’s navel beckons. Worst case, a dose of french nubility. Pull the shades and push play.

With the production values echoing numerous european independent films, we are introduced to the main character, a writer. Not the taught one promised by the poster. She is between middle age and whatever follows. That lack of definition has brought her to an insurmountable problem. Loosing touch with her own identity leaves her without the voice, wisdom, or passion to write her next novel. Drat! What shall she do?

Her editor, like a good clod, offers the writer respite in the form of his vacation home in France. She packs up her existential midlife crisis and heads off for some continental convalescence. Once there, she is terrorized by her own lost passion in the form of the lolita-esque daughter of the editor (see poster above). Less sexy than sexual, the escalation and social mores tickling interactions turn the audience inside out. What is the nature of the carnal and who bites the apple? Which slope of the hill am I on? Does that girl own clothes? As the twin dragons resolve into faces of Janus, the film strikes back.  With French restraint, oddities mix with pointillist precision. This is not a morality tale. This is not sexploitation. It is, as the movie poster describes, “Summer’s Sexiest Mystery.”

While the mind bending tenets are ‘sumbsumed’, or something like that (Eddie Izzard arranging matches), for a good time, snuggle up with your honey and pack a bowl. It won’t send you into fits of ecstasy, but the hints hidden in the shadows and dissociative resolution should be just enough to put a smirk on your face.

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