ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

SnoopyStyle Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) is a successful British crime fiction author. She's tired of everything and can't get started on her next novel. Her publisher John Bosload (Charles Dance) offers his french vacation home. It's the off-season, and she finds some peace until John's daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) shows up. Julie is a sexually provocative girl challenging Sarah's reservations. Then one night Julie kills a man after having oral sex.The murder comes in very late in the movie, and the tension doesn't have enough time to rise. The first 2/3 of the movie has a good deal of sexual tension. Although Charlotte Rampling is a great actress, I wonder if the tension could be higher with a male lead. It's a slightly different feel with Rampling and Sagnier. Sagnier never overtly makes a pass at Rampling. I think the movie could have higher tension.

Mr_Ectoplasma "Swimming Pool" focuses on Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), a British crime novelist who takes a vacation at her publisher's luxurious summer house in a small villa in Southern France to unwind and write her next book, which she seeks to aim in a different direction from her standard crime stories. Unfortunately for Sarah, after only a few days in the house, she is invaded by her publisher's troubled adult daughter who comes to stay there unannounced; what ensues is a rise in tension between the two, and a potential murder mystery that begins to unravel.Francois Ozon's dreamy thriller is not for the fast-paced crowd; it's a consciously slow film, meandering through a seemingly straightforward narrative that turns everything the audience knows (or thinks they know) on its head. Some have complained that nothing "happens" in the film, which is ridiculous; plenty happens. A lot of it is rather mundane, yes, but what's happening behind the mundane and the way in which Ozon crafts this layering is what's special about this film. Charlotte Rampling's performance as the stern and sexually frustrated writer is rich and impressive, and Ludivine Sagnier rises to the challenge, playing the damaged and troublesome young daughter of her publisher in a way that is both irritating and mysterious. The quality of these performances is vital to the success of the film, as the narrative progression (and unraveling) hinges entirely on their interactions, and both actresses deliver with a unique and appropriate chemistry.It's an ambiguous film that leaves a lot of loose ends, although, unlike some suggest, it does point to a clear conclusion. No less, the ninety minutes that precede the finale of the film are puzzling and haunting in spite of the apparent lack of anything frightening or wildly unusual. The possibility of Sarah's paranoia and mental state are worked into this, and her reliability as a narrator lends the film even more layers to sift through, but that's where its charm lies. The perhaps ordinary reckless teenage antics of Julie are framed by Ozone as disturbed and dangerous, and her intentions consistently laden with potential ulterior motives. The dreamy cinematography and lush filming locations add a thick atmosphere that makes this already bizarre film a complete treat for anyone who enjoys off-kilter cinema."Swimming Pool" is a film whose strength lies in everything that's unsaid, and this unusual dynamic is accentuated by solid performances and a finely-tuned script with a surprising and yet not-so-surprising conclusion. It's a film that relies on nuance and strangeness to propel it to its conclusion, but it's up to the viewer to decide what ultimately is more important— the truth, or the pretense that preceded it. 9/10.

jerrywright15 Directed by Francois Ozon. Starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. Swimming Pool is a tale of a middle-aged author (Rampling) who has hit a bit of a slump in her writing career. Feeling like she is missing something in her writing she approaches her publisher, who offers her his house in France as a way to clear her head. Upon arriving at the house, Sarah (Rampling), finds the place peaceful and relaxing and eagerly begins work on her new novel. Events begin to change when her publisher's sexually uninhibited daughter arrives, bringing a wildly different lifestyle from the uptight British authors. A shaky relationship begins to form between the two but as time passes Sarah begins to realize that things are not what they appear to be; leading to a controversial ending that will leave viewers stunned.Let me start off by saying I don't find myself watching this type of movie on a regular basis, unless its strongly suggested to me or I'm being forced to watch it. When I say, "this type of movie", I'm not referring to the mentally contemplating script, sexual nature or specific genre; instead I'm referring to an older, slow paced, foreign film with little to no hype by my knowledge. That being said, I will now be broadening my movie horizons to include these films as this movie, overall, delivered wonderfully. Kudos to the cast, director, writers and everyone else involved as they brought a thought provoking movie with a nice Alfred Hitchcock type style thrown in.Dissecting the movie piece by piece to give you an understanding of whats right with the movie and whats wrong with the movie would be pointless; because if you look at the film as individual scenes or characters it becomes quite boring, with low to no action, no unique or special characters and, in my opinion a bit of a snooze fest, unless you have a strong fascination with female nudity. But, when you look at it as a whole picture, watching it from beginning to surprising ending you get an appreciation for the film and what its done. Suddenly you go back and notice little details throughout the movie that weren't significant before and you realize just how well the actors played their roles; or how tiny little details, insignificant before, become vital in helping you understand what is really going on.Normally I would tell you the great aspects of the film but because it is one of those movies that is only good once you watch it in its entirety, I find it hard to highlight specific items. I will tell you the actresses play their parts to a T. The twist at the end will get anybody who paid attention, and only confuse those who hardly focused. I consider myself a pretty decent movie detective but I still failed to guess what was really going on.There is a fair amount of female nudity. For the most part its only breast being displayed, which any teenager these days has seen on cable TV more than once; but there are also some full nude shots and sexual acts committed a couple of times throughout so if that bothers you, you might want to skip this film. What I found surprising was that Charlotte Rampling, who this is my first time watching I believe, seems like such an actual uptight semi-proper woman that I didn't believe she would show anything for the camera but actually goes completely exposed for a scene. So yes, expect sex and expect both female leads to be naked at some point; but don't expect it to be just thrown gratuitously in; there is a deeper reason for everything happening including the sex.The reason this movie falls to a 8 instead of anything higher, is due to a couple of things. One, there is a lot of dialogue spoken in French, so much that I feel I missed important or at least interesting conversations and with no subtitles there was no way of interpreting it. But I have been informed that not all copies are that way and most do feature subtitles so I'll be sure to look into that next time. Ignoring that, if you choose, the biggest reason this film fails to be higher then a 8, to me, is because actually watching the movie is a bit of a challenge. The film moves incredibly slowly with not a lot of scenes that keep you entertained. There is little to nothing that resembles an actual thriller, which this is billed as, until the final thirty minutes or so of the film. Which means for over an hour your watching an author write, eat and watch her house-mate swim and have sex; with conversation that doesn't really become meaningful until the end. Also, for a woman staying in beautiful France not much of the environment is shown other than a villa and restaurant. So the scenery could have used some work.PROS:If you can get through the film, which many have, I promise it will be worth it. You may even end up going back through the film to validate your conclusion, as the ending really is left up to you to decide. Sex and nudity, if that's your thing.CONS: Slow movie. Language Barrier unless you view it with subtitles. Sex and nudity, if that's not your thing. No scenery.I'd recommend to anyone looking for something slower paced, more character driven rather then action oriented. Or Someone who enjoys films that leave you to think things out.8/10 from me. P.S. I gave it an 8 because there simply wasn't much to fault the movie on not because the film itself was necessarily great, the ending in my opinion saves it.

chaos-rampant In The Draughtsman's Contract, Greenaway's sardonic masterpiece, a sketch artist discovers that in capturing the image, hidden narrative intrudes that is mischievous and costs him his 'sight'. Three Crowns of a Sailor - exquisitely imagined by the recently departed Raoul Ruiz - sees a sailor recounting stories to a young student that become more strange as we sail with them, the beauty all in the voyage of shared adventure. Tarkovsky's Zerkalo above all; the whole film a hazy swim in half-remembered glimpses from a filmmaker's life in images.These are some of the best films I know on what this is all about; the mind running life as a story that permits recovering inner balance in a world of stories, our world. It all goes back to film noir and Kane.Look here. She is a middle-aged writer of very popular detective fiction, this was the forerunner of noir in the 30's. The point in that mode was that Holmes trumps chaos through masterstrokes of logic. But real life doesn't work that way, the internal life of dreams and intuition that we can barely make known to ourselves. Logic comes short, it just does.We have two books here, both written by women, both mistresses, both trying to commit inner turmoil to words.We understand that when she's going away to France to write her next installment, she's emotionally troubled, frustrated with her writing, confused with expectations of love and commitment.There, she discovers a brazen young girl who is open about all the things she keeps locked, open about sex and her body, about shared life that is exciting and dangerous. The moment she arrives, she takes the cover of the swimming pool to reveal azure waters below.So from at least the halfway point, we're meant to not be quite sure how far or close we're floating from the surface of reality, remember she's writing a story. How deep we swim into one or the other woman. There is a very dreamy shot like out of a perfume ad where the camera tracks over female curves sunbathing next to it, languid, promiscuous invitation. Is it purely sexual? Does sex unlock connection that she dreams about?Eventually, there's a crime involved, and she does all that snooping around that she knows from writing about it. When we surface back to London, we realize the girl was only the source of inspiration, the tip of the thread that leads inwards.So a writer has written herself inside a fiction where she can safely swim to the edges of anxiety about sex and sharing that troubles her in waking life, that is innermost self disguised as a crime novel but requires reading of layers to uncover, and allows her to finally know, when the man reads and discards it as 'not herself', demanding more of the predictable fiction that makes money, that this is not the man for her and is not worth the hassle and waiting. He simply didn't 'get' her, meaning he never knew her at at all beyond some part that fit into his schemes.It is not terribly original, a little safe if you consider advances of all those people, but there is beauty in the sparse arrangement, in the sense of a fluent reality that runs through the fingers the moment you dip into it.