The Swimming Pool

CinemaSerfSep 2025

3.5

Now if I was on holiday with my partner enjoying the sunshine, the swimming pool and plenty of sex, I don’t think I’d be very impressed at the arrival of their ex-lover and his teenage daughter. Even more inexplicably, it seems that “Marianne” (Romy Schneider) has actually invited “Harry” (Maurice Ronet) and “Pénélope” (Jane Birkin) to share the villa with the perplexed “Jean-Paul” (Alain Delon). It might be revenge or it might just be lust, but fairly swiftly the nose-out-of-joint “Jean-Paul” is becoming fond of the daughter whilst her father rather openly reminisces about and flirts with “Marianne”. With the sun shining and the booze flowing freely, tensions start to rises as the green eyed monster rears it’s ugly head in an increasingly toxic fashion. It’s a story about the fickleness of human relationships, about the shallowness of beauty and the temporary nature of “love”, and all four here exemplify the evils of temptation compellingly. The writing delivers quite a sparing, but potent, dialogue that conveys the crescendoing emotions enjoyably whilst the photography captures a lot of the beauty of their piscine and their glistening bodies. The tail-end reminded me a little of JB Priestley’s “An Inspector Calls” as detective “Lévêque” (Paul Crauchet) tries to fathom the unfathomable. This is one of those films that glows, and it has a classiness to it.