I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

From my favorite movies..

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This fine French crime drama, is not appreciated as it should be. The cast may be the reason, but there is no one, that comes to mind of contemporary French actors, at the time, that could have added something more to this. The centerpiece of this tale, of moral and emotional decadence is the swimming pool by beautiful villa, somewhere near Saint-Tropez and it radiates summer passion, it's turquoise waters filled with guilty conscience, calling for trouble between three old friends and lovers. Burden each of them carries, would lead to crime even without "sweet Jane" stirring it up to boiling point. Her presence is so light and she almost appears as a mirage, in between scenes of old passions, lust and grudges not forgotten.The film is everything but slow paced and boring. There is no surplus scene, and I can't imagine how it could be done differently. Of course such films in general are not for audiences of ready-made movies, but for those who will savor Jacques Deray's fine direction, and beautiful cinematography of Jean-Jacques Tarbès. They did a fine job in submerging a willing viewer into exquisite beauty of Romy Schneider, Alen Delon's cool in portrayal of insecure, troubled man that finds his life utterly pointless, Maurice Ronet's subtle acting performance of a successful composer who is afraid of his success, and Jane Birkin's girlish naiveté, ruffle the pool of love and hate. Interraction between Schneider, Delon and Ronet adds another level to it, and the story glides well with every scene serving the story of superficial, emotionless people trapped in their small worlds, in witch they are suffocating. Beautiful film, worth every minute of your time, and not just in cold winter months.

"The Swimming Pool" is not a bad movie nor is it a very good one. Instead, it starts with a reasonably interesting premise and infuses it with almost zero energy and passion. The end result is like a diet of tap water and bread--not especially satisfying.The film starts off horribly. There is a really, really annoying opening song--one of the worst I've heard in fact. Fortunately, the film does get better--it couldn't get any worse! Alain Delon and Romy Schneider are a couple enjoying their time together on vacation. They mostly just lounge around the pool and make love--and considering how beautiful this couple is, I am sure many folks didn't mind this slow portion of the film. It certainly was very sexy.An old lover of Schneider's shows up uninvited (Maurice Ronet) and brings his 18 year-old daughter (Jane Birkin). Instead of maintaining their passion, however, Schneider begins drifting towards her old lover and Delon just looks very bored. Later, Delon begins paying a lot of attention to the 18 year-old--though exactly how deep this relationship goes, you never know. What you do know, though, is that both Delon and Schneider begin to take the other for granted and their relationship suffers badly.While this sounds like there would be a lot of excitement, there isn't--and it's all very strangely muted. Instead of anger, they mostly seemed filled with ennui and self-absorption--making the film very tough to enjoy. Only towards the end are there any--and by then it just seemed too late, as my attention had long since vanished--and it's a shame, as the ending was pretty interesting (at least compared to the rest of the film). Had there been more fireworks along the way and some performances seeming more like normal human reactions, then the film could have been a lot more interesting. Slow and tough to love.

Almost inevitably this movie is destined to be compared to The Swimming Pool, which was released some 34 years later. Actually there is no comparison given that Deray's movie is light years ahead of Ozon's. In Ozon's defense he was lumbered with Charlotte Rampling and Ludo Savignier whilst Deray was blessed with Romy Schneider and also had on hand the classiest actor in either movie, Paul Crauchet. It's touching that with police force in Marseilles, inundated as they are by organized crime, gang wars (in fact Deray's very next film, again featuring Alain Delon, was Borsalino), drug cartels, prostitution etc, are quite happy to devote so many man hours to investigating the only slightly suspicious death of one of the rich parasites who come down to the Riviera for a month or so and contribute virtually nothing to either the economy or culture of the region. Because the investigator is played by Paul Crauchet the sequences involving him add gravitas to the last three or four reels. I had never seen it before but it appears to have aged well, more, I suspect, than one will be able to say of the Ozon entry in thirty years time.

An incredibly attractive bourgeois couple (Romy Schneider and Alain Delon) are luxuriating in an idyllic French villa when they receive a visit from an old friend of the husband and old flame of the wife (Maurice Ronet) who had actually first introduced them to each other. Their visitor is accompanied by his temptingly nubile 18-year-old illegitimate daughter (Jane Birkin). Infidelity, jealousy, and eventually murder ensue.This film in some ways resembles the emerging Italian gialli thrillers(especially the early ones with Carrol Baker and/or Jean Sorel), but it is much more staid and psychological and less over-the-top than the Italian films. And of course, it also fit squarely in the tradition of French thrillers somewhere between "Diabolique" and Claude Chabrol. The three leads are very good, but Jane Birkin is pretty miscast--she was too old for this role and seemed to be trying to overcompensate by running and skipping around, acting more like a 12-year-old girl than an 18-year-old one (and the result, needless to say, is pretty bizarre). Birkin also tragically keeps her clothes on (although she does spend most of the movie modelling various bikinis), but the equally gorgeous Schneider more than makes up for it. Ironically however, the major flaw in this movie is that the four principals are all SO glamorous and beautiful that it's hard for us normal folk to relate or sympathize with them.Schneider and Birkin would appear together again with better results in "Love at the Top" (where the latter more than makes up for her regrettable lack of skin here). I suspect this movie not only partially inspired the likes of Claude Chabrol, but also the very recent sexy French thriller with same name ("Swimming Pool" in the English-speaking world) in which Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier seemed to be respectively channeling the erotic spirits of Schneider and Birkin. One thing's for sure, France has never looked more beautiful than it does here.