Swimming Pool Reviews

I already saw this movie, but since it was a while back and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out again. First of all, I always had some rather mixed feelings about François Ozon’s work. Indeed, even though he has a really good reputation, I really hated his directing debut ‘Sitcom’ and really disliked his second effort ‘Les amants criminels’. Fortunately, he got better (the guy is so prolific, he managed to make 22 movies during the last 25 years) and I think it was with this movie that he got his first international success. It's interesting because, the first time around, I thought it was pretty obvious that Ozon wanted to emulate Hitchcock’s style but I didn't get this vibe at all when I rewatched it. Indeed, instead, in spite of a rather ominous score, Ozon actually didn't really settle for a specific tone or genre which made the whole thing quite intriguing. Eventually, I think it is above all a character study focusing on two different women who might seem to be complete opposites and, yet, I think they both shared a strong loneliness. By the way, I was slightly bothered by the fact that there was no way an average French girl like her who barely had contact with her English father could speak English so well (I'm French and I know French people just suck at speaking foreign languages). However, you could consider it as a hint that this character was actually fictional and therefore made up by Sarah Morton, even if this creation was actually flawed.  Anyway, there is no doubt that Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier both gave some strong performances. For Rampling, she actually had to thank Ozon for completely rebooting her career back then thanks to this movie and 'Sous le sable'. For Sagnier, I always thought she would become huge after this movie but she turned out to have a decent career afterwards but not much more than that, at least, not outside France. Eventually, even though these 2 characters were intriguing and these 2 actresses were really good, the story was still missing something to become really fascinating though. Anyway, to conclude, even if I don’t think it was a masterpiece, it was still a pretty good movie and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in French movies.

Of course, some of them are good. Some are awful. Like all movies.
But this one was kinda useless. I could fall asleep easily.
Though, I must say the end was quite good and interesting so after all it wasn't a total waste of time.

I think as french movies are not as common as american, at least in Brazil, you don't have the chance sometimes to watch really good ones. I mean generally.