Door in the Floor/Swimming Pool Value

Starring:Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Jean-Marie Lamour, Marc Fayolle, Mireille MossÃ©, Michel Fau, Jean-Claude Lecas, Emilie Gavois-Kahn, Erarde Forestali, Lauren Farrow, Sebastian Harcombe, Frances Cuka, Keith Yeates, Tricia Aileen, Glen Davies, Elle Fanning, Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster
Director: FranÃ§ois Ozon, Tod Williams
Studio: Universal Studios Ho
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

In terms of alluring female nudity, Swimming Pool shows a lot, but it's what remains concealed that gives this erotic thriller a potent, voyeuristic charge. With his Hitchcockian handling of secrets and lies, prolific French director François Ozon reunites with his Under the Sand star, Charlotte Rampling, to tell a seductive tale of murder and complicity, beginning when British mystery novelist Sarah Morton (Rampling) seeks peace and relaxation at her publisher's French villa, only to find his brash, sexually liberated daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) arriving shortly thereafter to disrupt her solitary reverie. What begins as mutual annoyance turns into something more sinister and duplicitous, alternating between Julie's predatory sex with men and Sarah's observant, perhaps jealous fascination. These two women, generations apart, share in Ozon's delicate dance of trust, curiosity, and gradual understanding, until a twist ending that forces you to reevaluate everything you've seen. Only then will the mysteries of Swimming Pool be fully and tantalizingly revealed. (Note: The unrated version contains full-frontal nudity that's been edited from the rated version. In both versions, the overall plot is not affected.) --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Was it a dream? Is this reality? If I don't know, then I don't care........2007-07-05

Ultimately this is a stinker. It started out great and then the "did that really happen?", "which part is real?" stuff started...and I stopped caring. Skip it; you're not missing much.

Intellectual but also alive.......2007-06-20

A truly interesting, beautiful, and thought-provoking film, about desire, revenge, and sisterhood (motherhood? daughterhood?), and the sources of art. The men have no chance in this movie, which turns out to be a good thing; it's not a film about romance, despite the fact that both female protagonists have a soft, sentimental spot for a good "harlequin." If it's a film about sex (and there is plenty of steamy sex in the film), it's about sex as a proxy for something harder and more elemental: the need to be recognized and affirmed. Despite being an intellectual movie, it's also eminently watchable, even gripping. A careful, even brilliant performance on all levels.

Mostly a Waste of Time.......2007-03-07

The movie starts off very slowly, gathers a bit of steam, and then takes a plot turn that is totally inconsistent with the personalities of the two main characters, uptight writer Sarah and free spirit Julie.

I'd quote one of Sarah's lines as she "assists" Julie with a task that they undertake, but it would be too much of a spoiler... in any case, once that line was spoken, I lost all respect for the plot.

Some of the scenery in the movie is pleasing to the eye. For that, I'll give the movie two stars, rather than the one star it would have otherwise deserved.

In any case -- don't waste your time watching "Swimming Pool." You'll drown in the stupidity.

Swimming Pool is a sly, subtle and sexy mystery.......2007-02-12

This movie is a really enjoyable adventure through the eyes of a female mystery writer, Sarah Morton played by Charlotte Rampling. Morton is looking for a new and different kind of story to add to her list of successful mystery novels. As a working retreat, she accepts the use of her publisher's home in Luberon, in the south of France, where she soon encounters the lovely young indolent and insouciant daughter (we think!) of her publisher, played by Ludivine Sagnier in her blossoming youth. What follows is ingenous, keenly interesting and definitely offbeat but fully enjoyable. The nudity of both Rampling and Sagnier is in fine taste (for Europeans) and still gives we old men something to lust over. Great movie, but you have to see it to appreciate it because the ending leaves one slowly becomming aware of the real story.

Quite the little head trip........2007-02-09

Swimming Pool explores some very interesting themes: the differences between youth and age, innocence, sexual awakening, motherhood, solitude, and voyeurism, among others.

The plot is deceivingly simple. Sarah, a writer, is staying at her editor's house in France so she can work on her next novel. She's had a great deal of success as a mystery writer, but seems to have hit a wall. She doesn't want to do another mystery, but she doesn't know what else to write about.

Enter Julie, the editor's daughter. She breezes into the house one night like a force of nature. Her first order of business? She uncovers the swimming pool in the backyard. It's full of leaves, but this doesn't stop her from peeling her clothes off and swimming in it. She also takes to sunbathing topless and having sex in the living room on a nightly basis, with whatever men she can talk into coming home with her.

Sarah is disgusted by all of this behavior at first, but as time goes by, she becomes captivated by it. She creates a 'Julie' file on her computer, and she starts writing again.

But there's a lot more going on under the surface. What is fantasy? What is reality? Is the movie just a product of Sarah's imagination? Are Sarah and Julie linked in some way, and if so, how? What the hell is going on?

Francois Orzon, in an interview with Indie Wire, had this to say:

"I don't want to give you the key. I myself have an opinion about it, obviously -- but I wanted to keep the film open-ended and let every viewer imagine what he wishes. It's a movie that gives viewers the freedom to make their own film."

So essentially the meaning of the movie is left for you to decipher. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It doesn't really seem like good storytelling, and it would be disastrous if every director in the world started doing this. But Orzon isn't every director, and Swimming Pool isn't an ordinary movie. I found myself thinking about it a lot once I had ejected the DVD, turning the facts over in my mind and trying to make them fit into some kind of coherent storyline. It's strangely satisfying to do this, and I seriously suggest that you watch the film so you can do the same.

My only complaint is that the DVD features were sparse - just a trailer and a few deleted scenes that didn't seem to add much. There wasn't any director's commentary, which irked me to no end. I would have loved to hear Orzon's take on the rather bizarre series of events, but no such luck.

Oh, and should you pick up the unrated version, be prepared for a lot of Ludivine Sagnier's breasts. They should have been given second billing for all their screen time.

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