Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash debuted at the Venice Film festival and will also screen at the BFI London Film Festival on 10.9. For some reason a trailer has surfaced despite the commercial British opening happening in mid February and the U.S. release delayed until 5.13.16.

Posted on 9.1.15: As I suspected/projected earlier this month, Fox Searchlight has given Luca Guadignino‘s A Bigger Splash a spring ’16 release date — May 13th, to be precise, or right in the middle of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival (5.11 to 5.22). And yet this relationship melodrama costarring Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts, a remake of Jacques Deray‘s La Piscine (’69) and set on a Mediterranean island, will debut in a few days at the Venice Film Festival, and then will open theatrically in England in February.

I’m sure there are precedents, but when was the last time that a significant-sounding, name-brand film of this type (noirish, adult) was booked for Venice but not for Telluride or Toronto? Why did Fox Searchlight acquire U.S. distribution rights only to give it the bum’s rush? Perhaps it’ll screen as part of the World Cinema program during Sundance ’16.

From “The Water Is Cold,” posted on 8.7.15: “Last night I finally watched La Piscine start to finish. The plot and the tone are as malevolent as this kind of thing gets. It’s a Mediterranean sun-baked noir with nary a drop of heart or compassion. And in at least one respect it’s fairly deranged. I sensed or suspected right away how audiences will respond to A Bigger Splash if it follows the plot of La Piscine. ‘Audience-friendly’ is not a term that I’d use.”