Archive of films Swimming Pool / Swimming Pool

France
2003, 102 min

Section: Horizons
Year: 2003

A writer in a creative crisis seeks peace and quiet at someone else’s country house. The invasion of a young woman is a distraction but it offers her unexpected inspiration.

Synopsis

Sarah Morton, an English writer of successful detective stories, is offered the use of her publisher’s French country house in order to rest up and gain strength for her new book. Sarah accepts and at the beginning it seems that she may find the necessary peace and her lost equilibrium. But one night the publisher’s daughter Julie turns up at the house, someone Sarah has never heard anything about. The girl’s impertinence and, indeed, her rather off-colour behavior irritate Sarah. Tension soon develops into female rivalry between the aging beauty and the young woman when a country Don Juan comes onto the scene. Open animosity threatens to break out until the consequences of Julie’s reckless behaviour awaken the writer’s protective instinct, as well as her talent for solving criminal intrigues. For the second time (after Under the Sand) François Ozon successfully cast Charlotte Rampling into the role of a mature intellectual. The character of a writer allowed him to maintain the movie on the border between reality and fantasy and to leave conclusions up to the viewer: was it fact or fiction?

About the director

François Ozon (b. 1967, Paris) graduated in film and then attended France’s famed FEMIS film school. His short films were shown at many film festivals around the world. In 1998 he shot his feature debut Sitcom, screened in the Critics’ Week section at the Cannes IFF. His next two features were also screened at top festivals – Criminal Lovers (Les amants criminel, 1999, Venice) and Water Drops on Burning Rocks (Gouttes d´eau sur pierres brulantes, 2000, Berlin). In 2002 he shot 8 Women, based on the novel by Robert Thomas and starring outstanding French actresses of many generations; collectively they received the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement at the 2002 Berlinale. Swimming Pool was screened in the competition this year at Cannes. Selected filmography: See the Sea (Regarde la mer, 1996), Sitcom (1997), Les amants criminel (1999), Gouttes d´eau sur pierres brulantes (2000), Under the Sand (Sous le sable, 2000), 8 femmes (2002), Swimming Pool (2003). 

Contacts

Celluloid Dreams
2, rue Turgot, 75009, Paris
France
Tel: +33 149 700 370
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.celluloid-dreams.com

Intersonic s. r.o. organizační složka - Czech Republic
Burešova 4, 182 00, Praha 8
Czech Republic
Fax: +420 286 585 731
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.intersonic.cz

Fidélité Productions
13, rue Etienne Marcel, 75001, Paris
France
Tel: +33 1 553 498 08
Fax: +33 1 553 498 10
E-mail: [email protected]

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About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section:	Horizons

Director:	François Ozon
Screenplay:	Francois Ozon, Emmanuelle Bernheim
Dir. of Photography:	Yorick Le Saux
Music:	Philippe Rombi
Editor:	Monica Coleman
Producer:	Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier
Production:	Fidélité Productions
Cast:	Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle, Jean-Marie Lamour
Contact:	Celluloid Dreams, Intersonic s. r.o. organizační složka - Czech Republic, Fidélité Productions

Guests

Pierre Menahem

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