Set in the sun-drenched outskirts of Saint-Tropez at a villa, filmmaker Jacques Deray’s La Piscine (1969) opens with a shot of swimsuit-clad and golden-tanned Jean-Paul (Alain Delon) and Marianne (Romy Schneider) locked in an erotic embrace on the flagstones surrounding the titular crystal-clear azure pool ringed by vibrantly green trees. The scene virtually screams living in a garden paradise but premonitions of the fall come very quickly: the beautiful couple is interrupted by a phone call from Harry (Maurice Ronet)—a former lover of Marianne’s—who is en route to this getaway location with his 18-year-old daughter, Penelope (Jane Birkin).
Over the course of the first hour, tensions between the two alpha males will steadily—if quite languidly—increase, as Harry flirts with Marianne and Jean-Paul indulges the moon-eyed Penelope. But a sociopathic act of surprisingly passionless violence sends the second half of the film in a different—albeit somewhat predictable—direction, as a regional inspector (Paul Craúchet) suspects that a reported “accident” may in fact be a case of foul play. At 122 minutes, La Piscine is overlong and is neither a thriller nor a mystery so much as a slow-moving situational character study.
While the blustery and bland characters played by Ronet and Birkin, respectively, serve as catalysts for the narrative’s limited action, Delon and Schneider (real-life former ex-lovers) command the screen with their sculpted physiques and tell-tale eyes, and the film’s final, haunting shot is a testament to the complexity of their doomed relationship.
Bolstered by a suitably sunny (if sparse) Michel Legrand score, La Piscine bows on Blu-ray with a gorgeous transfer and features extras including “The Swimming Pool: First Love Never Dies” (the English-language version of the film), Agnès Vincent-Deray’s 2019 featurette “Fifty Years Later” (with Delon, Birkin, screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, and novelist Jean-Emmanuel Conil), a new interview with scholar Nick Rees-Roberts on the film’s cinematic and aesthetic legacy, archival footage featuring cast and crew, an alternate ending, and a leaflet with an essay by film critic Jessica Kiang.
Hardly essential, La Piscine is still a colorful splash of formalist Gallic cinema, which was then being heavily challenged by the French New Wave. A strong optional purchase.