Swimming Pool

In Film Studies we watched a film called Swimming Pool by French director, Francis Ozon. Sarah, played by English actress Charlotte Rampling is the main charater in the film plays a famous British author who specialises in writing about crime. At the start of the film she seems bored of London and needs new inspiration for her new novel so the publisher of her books John, kindly suggests that she goes and stay at his holiday home in the south of France for as long as she needs. Sarah finds the peace and quiet idealic until one night John's French daughter Julie turns up unexpected. Sarah is infuriated that John did not warn her before her arrival that she would be also going to stay. Julie and Sarah's personailites and lifestyle clash instantly, as Julie is a wreckless teenager who throughout the film brings a different man back every night. However, they soon start interacting when Julie accidently kills one of the men she has brought back whilst Sarah is documenting Julie's every move for her new Novel.

Swimming Pool was not the sort of film I would watch out of choice, it did not do anything for me as it was very slow and quite unsettling at times. There was strong sexual references and complicated stories within the story that I found hard to understand. The ending got me completely as I could not worked out that was actually happening. We talked about it in the Seminar and lots of different scenario's were made up which made the possibilties of a correct ending endless. I can see why people would like the fim because of how calm and simple it was but just the story being complicated made it difficult for me.