Criterion’s reportedly handsome new Bluray of Jacques Deray‘s Le Piscine (’69) popped yesterday. All the would-be elites who follow Criterion’s lead have bought into the legend of this Gallic noir. The disc contains a new restored 4K digital transfer, a 2019 documentary about the film by Agnès Vincent-Deray, featuring costars Alain Delon and Jane Birkin, screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, and novelist Jean-Emmanuel Conil; archival footage featuring Delon, Birkin and costar Romy Schneider; an alternate ending; and an essay by film critic Jessica Kiang.
I’m just reminding HE regulars that I watched La Piscine about six years ago and found it rather off-putting. Noirs obviously aren’t about radiating warmth and emotional assurance, but La Piscine is extremely cold; a good portion of the second half radiates outright cruelty. The plot and the tone are as malevolent as this kind of thing gets. And in at least one respect it’s fairly deranged.
Delon’s Jean Paul dumps Schneider’s Marianne somewhere around the two-thirds mark, and it just doesn’t calculate a guy who looks like Delon would jettison one of most beautiful women in the world. Schneider was 30 when La Piscine was made in September 1968, and was dead 13 and 2/3 years later, at age 43.
I’ve said this a few times before, but the fact of the matter is that Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash (`16), a fairly exacting remake of La Piscine, is a hell of a lot richer and certainly more engaging than Deray’s original. The ’69 film is superficially attractive but a turn-off in most respects; A Bigger Splash is an absolute turn-on.
From my 4.11.16 review: “Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash is a Mediterranean hothouse noir — a not-especially-sordid sex and betrayal story that builds so slowly and languidly it feels like there’s nothing going on except for the vibe, and honestly? It’s so lulling and flavorful and swoony and sun-baked that you just give in to it. The undercurrent is…well, gently mesmerizing, and that was enough for me. I felt like I was savoring a brief vacation. I’m not saying the dramatic ingredients are secondary, but they almost are.
“The title comes from a David Hockney painting, and that in itself should tell you where Guadagnino is coming from. A Bigger Splash is about island vibes and coolness and louche attitudes and to some extent the splendor of the druggy days, and particularly the legend of the Rolling Stones.
“In my mind the island of Pantelleria, which is halfway between Tunisia and the southwest coast of Sicily, isn’t just the setting but a kind of lead character. It colors and tonalizes and blows little mood gusts.
“Swinton plays Marianne, a late 40ish rock star (a sort of female David Bowie type) who’s vacationing there with boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), a distinctly younger fellow who’s a rock-industry photographer/filmmaker.
“The kindling catches when Swinton’s ex-boyfriend, the more age-appropriate Harry (Ralph Fiennes), arrives for an out-of-the-blue visit with his somewhat distant daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson), and he starts playing silly little head and mood games that are half-hilarious and almost reminiscent of Ben Kingsley‘s Don Logan in Sexy Beast…if Logan had been more personable and honed his social skills. At the same time Penelope, an icy little player of games, starts eyeballing Paul.
“A Bigger Splash takes a while to kick in but it’s eventually about underlying agendas and sexual ploys and finally an accidental (certainly half-accidental) homicide, but I was so taken by the laid-back atmosphere, and the sense of almost tasting the wine and smelling the afternoon wind and the warm ricotta cheese from my seat…it’s really something to sink into.
“You feel so nicely brought along by Yorick Le Saux‘s sun-speckled afternoon cinematography and Walter Fasano‘s disciplined cutting, and by the nostalgic Stones vibe (there’s a lip-synch dance sequence that made me fall in love all over again with “Emotional Rescue”) and especially by Fiennes’ giddy-ass, run-at-the-mouth, rock-and-roll madman performance that I was going “wow, I almost don’t even care what may or may not happen in this thing.”
“Well, I did as far as the plot unfolded. When the heavy-ass, third-act complications arrived I was…well, not uninterested. They’re definitely intriguing as far as they go, especially when the law steps in and starts asking questions. But I just liked being there.”
