La piscine

It annoys me to read that a film has not aged well. A film is made in its day, the very next day some event may contradict its content. Suffice it to look at how very few in the younger generation accept that there was a pre-Internet and pre-mobile phone time, and how that has impacted on the cinema at large and their notion of the "olden days."

What LA PISCINE presents is a foursome: Jean-Paul (Delon) currently seeing Marianne (Schneider); a visiting pal, Harry (Ronet), who had dated Schneider until as recently as four years ago; and the latter's daughter, Penelope, played by the lovely Jane Birkin, here around the time that she sang the famous "Je t'aime... moi non plus" lovemaking duet with Serge Gainsbourg.

In real life, Delon and Schneider had been married until Delon knocked up Nathalie, splitting with the latter in 1967, and by mid-1968, when LA PISCINE was shot, they seemed ready to resume their relation. Alas, that did not work, and in the film you can see that even though they end up physically together, there is far too much baggage for those ties to hold.

After a frantically sexy start to the movie, we see Harry's arrival and it is immediately clear that Delon is not comfortable with Marianne's former lover around.

To thicken the tension, Harry has a very low opinion of Jean-Paul, who can feel it, and later receives confirmation of that perception from Penelope, who is less than impressed with her father's behavior, bringing in friends without warning, trying to rekindle his relation with Marianne in Delon's presence.

Delon looks fit, runs around like a cat on heat after the female that he beds with and possibly after Harry's 18 year old daughter (we never get to know whether J-P banged Pen, but both Marianne and Harry suspect it).

The animal in Delon is further aroused when Harry returns drunk from a night in the village, and in vino veritas, proceeds to tell Delon what he thinks of him, how useless he is as a writer and as just about everything else in life.

Delon, already annoyed over Harry's advances on the loyal Marianne, does not take well to criticism and snaps, willfully drowning Harry in the swimming pool, in a sequence that left me rather anxious and even scared, as Harry kept pleading for his life.

J-P, (played phenomally and efficiently by a Delon of menacing silences and stone-cold eyes), may be a cheap writer but he can take control of a situation slipping from him. He manages to elude the suspicious police inspector (competently played by Crauchet, who keeps returning with another question, as Falk's Columbo would do a decade later) and to get Marianne to stay with him... at least until film's end. As indicated earlier, there is far too much baggage weighing down their relation, and in fact both parties had previously stated their readiness to part company, until Delon senses the wisdom of keeping Romy sweet, given that the gumshoe might come back any time and turn up more evidence.

I am not particularly fond of Director Jacques Deray, who the following year would bungle BORSALINO, the only film ever to bring together Delon and Belmondo, but in LA PISCINE he makes good use of a psychologically perceptive script by Jean-Claude Carrière, extracts highly convincing performances from all in the small ensemble, even the maid, and the simple, unobtrusive exterior and interior cinematography by Jean-Jacques Tarbes works very effectively throughout.

LA PISCINE's sharp dialogue held my attention from beginning to end. You can expect sensuality, not physical action like fisticuffs... instead it comes in a burst of silent, dark, premeditated violence.

Recommended viewing. 8/10.

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.

The failing writer Jean-Paul (Alain Delon) and his lover Marianne (Romy Schneider) are together for more than two years and spending vacation in a mansion in Saint-Tropez that belongs to a friend of them. They spend most of the time in the swimming pool that is the main attraction of the real estate. Jean-Paul is an insecure man and tried to commit suicide because of the reviews of his last novel but now is recovered.

When the successful composer Harry (Maurice Ronet), who had been Marianne's lover for four years, calls her and tells that he is passing by Saint-Tropez with his teenage daughter Pénélope (Jane Birkin), she invites them to come to the mansion to stay with Jean-Paul and her. Soon Harry woos Marianne trying to rekindle their former relationship and there is a tension in the house. Jean-Paul does not react and seduces Pénélope instead that discloses the true feelings of Harry towards him. One night, Harry comes late night drunken and argues with Jean-Paul, telling that he is a loser. However he falls in the swimming pool and Jean-Paul does not let him leave the water. Harry is drowned by Jean-Paul that forges a situation indicating that Harry has accidentally died. However the smart Inspector Lévêque (Paul Crauchet) does not buy the evidences of accident. What will happen to Jean-Paul?

"La Piscine" is a movie with a simple, sensual and tense story with a sexy beginning. Romy Schneider is among the most beautiful women in the world and her eyes, her face and her body mesmerize any male viewer. The characters are not well developed and keep a mystery of their true intentions, leaving to the viewer's interpretation. The cinematography is bright like the weather in Saint-Tropez, and the beauty and the eyes of Romy Schneider, Jane Birkin and Alain Delon are highlighted by the camera. The most impressive is that this movie has not aged after almost fifty years. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Piscina" ("The Swimming Pool")

Note: On 28 January 2017, I saw this film again.

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.

Ignore the Naysayers, "La Pacine" is a masterful film. A true example of the kind of film they only really made in that area: vibrant and glossy, where a voyeuristic camera just hovers and lingers, putting the viewer right there. It reminded me a lot of Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt." The way it is filmed makes the viewer want to be in that world, and stay there as long as possible. I know that South France in 1960's seems a hell of lot better than our world today. If "La Pacine" was 3 hours long, I would still sit through it, just to BE there.

I found the acting performances to be extraordinary. So much in this film is conveyed through body language and facial expressions, that one hardly even needs to know French (or read subtitles) to understand what it happening. Romy Schneider and Jane Birkin are both great to look at, and I thought Jane Birkin in particular really did well to say a lot with few words.

The only thing that slightly drags "La Pacine" down is that it's slightly overlong in the drawn out expository section after the climax, which causes the film to loose a bit of punch by the end. So come hang out by the pool for a while, I don't think you'll regret it.