Far removed from the stylistic Technicolor murder musical madness of his last outing 8 Women, Francois Ozon returns with a stylish intelligent thriller which reunites him with Charlotte Rampling, who previously worked with the director in his haunting Under the Sand (2001). Their latest collaboration is no less transfixing. Rampling plays Sarah Morton, a stuffy English detective writer who has made her career on a faintly ridiculous character called Inspector Dorwell. Unsure of where she's going with her next book or indeed her life, the needy yet repressed Morton is offered the usage of her publisher's (Dance) villa in the South of France. The peace that Morton so obviously craves is shattered when her publisher's daughter shows up unannounced. A sexually confident creature, Julie (Sagnier) is the polar opposite of Sarah and delights in bringing back men to the house for noisy late night sex. Understandably this doesn't endear her to Sarah, but after a terse start to their relationship, Sarah begins to find inspiration in the self-effacing attitude of the younger woman.
For the first hour of Swimming Pool, Ozon seems intent on examining two radical visages of female sexuality, the competitive nature of females and playing with the conventions offered up by national stereotypes. However, some way into the movie, he flips everything on its head and pushes the movie in a delirious new direction, converting things into a Hitchcock-esque drama with a questionable moral centre. In Rampling and Sagnier, he's found two actresses who are fascinating to watch playing off each other. And though the ending may perplex as many as it delights, Ozon's film is never less than absorbing and Swimming Pool drips with a sun-kissed sensuality.
