Swimming Pool

A seductive English-language thriller from writer-director Francois Ozon (8 Women, Under the Sand), Swimming Pool masterfully invokes the shadowy spirit of film noir with its story of a creatively-and-sexually frustrated, aging British mystery novelist (Charlotte Rampling) who seeks inspiration, taking a working holiday to the vacant south-of-France second home of her publisher--only to be derailed by the unannounced arrival of the publisher's disruptive daughter (Ludivine Sagnier), a slinky, tousled-hair teenage sexpot with a tendency toward inebriated trysts with middle-aged men in the chateau's backyard pool. Annoyed and flustered, but soon fascinated as well by the girl's self-destructive free-spiritedness, Rampling finds herself invigorated by a compulsion to pry into the psyche of this novice femme fatale. But while her snooping begets a burst of creative writing, it also sets off a chain of events that quickly turns precarious, deeply embroiling the author in the kind of suspense and intrigue she's known only in her own fiction. A solid genre-tweaker, this is recommended. [Note: Available in either an “R”-rated or unrated version, DVD extras in the unrated version include four deleted scenes (1-5 min. each) and trailers. Bottom line: a very lite extras package for a solid thriller.] (R. Blackwelder)