17 reviews
I just wasted 2 hours of my time watching this horrible movie and then coming on here to see people's opinions on what the darn thing even meant. I like a movie with twists and turns, but if it is one that NOBODY can really agree on what those twists and turns are then I think it is a bit too vague! If you like a movie that leaves you with all kinds of unanswered questions then this movie is for you. If not then don't waste your time like I did. Definitely one of the worst movies I've seen lately. I consider this to be a big F-! (aka BOMB!) Script is horrible, nudity is horrible, plot is horrible. The only thing that was okay about this movie was the acting. I feel sorry for anyone that rents it or tries to sit through it. If you try it...one piece of advice...use the fast forward button!!!!
- KrazeyDazey
- Nov 10, 2004
- Permalink
What can I say about such an overrated movie on my side of the Ocean? If I can understand why it was in the official selection of the last Cannes Film Festival (boring as hell and without any plot), why the actresses so excited the journalists is still a mystery. Ludivine Sanier always sucked in French (how can such an act even be called an act?), but there, in English, she might compete for the raspberry award next year!!! I hope that's the only award she'll ever have with this production.
I won't speak here about the plot or the boring pace of the film, it looked like an intellectual exercise that surely excited Ozon himself, but he lost me in it. And the last image of this film shows clearly that he wasn't even sure someone in the audience might understand his point.
Why did I see this film, then? well, I simply hoped that French directors could still do good thrillers, like we saw with "The Bride wore black", "The Butcher" or "One deadly summer". the answer is clearly no.
I won't speak here about the plot or the boring pace of the film, it looked like an intellectual exercise that surely excited Ozon himself, but he lost me in it. And the last image of this film shows clearly that he wasn't even sure someone in the audience might understand his point.
Why did I see this film, then? well, I simply hoped that French directors could still do good thrillers, like we saw with "The Bride wore black", "The Butcher" or "One deadly summer". the answer is clearly no.
- lauclair2000
- Jun 12, 2003
- Permalink
This is a prime example of how to waste what could have been a decent thriller by resorting to the tired cliche of tricking the viewer into thinking that what is transpiring is NOT all in the writers imagination.
It does not matter what was real or imagined, because all of it was ponderous, pretentious, and wholly unbelievable.
Sure, a naked Sagnier was nice to look at, but getting a full frontal of Rampling wiped out that image. Speaking of Rampling, I've seen more movement from corpses on CSI. All I wanted to do throughout the movie was to wipe that sneering smile off her face -- which was the extent of her emotional range.
There were SO many clues in the movie that what you were watching was not real (but out of the mind of the writer), that I cannot see how anyone could say otherwise.
Think Sarah had sex with Marcel? Think again. Think Sarah helps Julie bury a murdered Franck with less emotion than when she dumped Julie's kitchen trash? No way.
Slinky Julie was Sarah's fantasy representation of chubby Julia, and that was the only "surprise" of the movie; i.e., that the real "Julie" looked nothing like the author's imaginary one.
This was a movie in which I kept waiting for something to happen. Check that, waiting for many things to happen like a recognizable story line with plot twists.
This swimming pool was drained dry before it even began.
It does not matter what was real or imagined, because all of it was ponderous, pretentious, and wholly unbelievable.
Sure, a naked Sagnier was nice to look at, but getting a full frontal of Rampling wiped out that image. Speaking of Rampling, I've seen more movement from corpses on CSI. All I wanted to do throughout the movie was to wipe that sneering smile off her face -- which was the extent of her emotional range.
There were SO many clues in the movie that what you were watching was not real (but out of the mind of the writer), that I cannot see how anyone could say otherwise.
Think Sarah had sex with Marcel? Think again. Think Sarah helps Julie bury a murdered Franck with less emotion than when she dumped Julie's kitchen trash? No way.
Slinky Julie was Sarah's fantasy representation of chubby Julia, and that was the only "surprise" of the movie; i.e., that the real "Julie" looked nothing like the author's imaginary one.
This was a movie in which I kept waiting for something to happen. Check that, waiting for many things to happen like a recognizable story line with plot twists.
This swimming pool was drained dry before it even began.
With a score that seemed to have derived from Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock's soundtrack composer in his later years, The Swimming Pool opened with possibilities. Sarah Morton travels to France for a peaceful holiday, only to have it interrupted by her publisher's oversexed daughter. The only problem is that François Ozon seemed to have forgotten the key element in all suspense films. One must have an ending before one even starts. But there was none. The Swimming Pool ended up in a belly flop. Watching the finale of this film is like watching Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes and going "Huh?" at the end, because nothing made any sense. Well, I guess one can always hope for a non-director's cut, where there is actually a conclusion. Basically, there was an hour and a half of slow, slow build-up to a scathing let-down. Did the last thirty minutes of the film accidentally get destroyed with chlorine or did François Ozon just go off the deep end? Perhaps Ludivine Sagnier as Tinkerbell could shed a bit of light or at least sprinkle me with some faerie dust. But as it is, after watching this drowning mystery for nearly two hours, I just cannot find a happy thought.
- Minerva_Meybridge
- Jul 16, 2008
- Permalink
This is what happens when you don't check the director before watching a movie; had I known this was by the director of 8 Femmes I never would have bothered with it. So it's all my own fault.
Anyway, this film treads water for the first two thirds. About a half hour or so in I checked some comments here to try and gauge whether anything would *ever* happen and the suggestion that the ending was intriguing made me decide to keep watching. Big Mistake.
After an hour of nothing much happening except Sagnier prancing around naked (really, the nudity is the only reason to watch this), finally something happens, but it's all ridiculously, painfully stupid. I found the last part just agonizing to sit through yet wanted to see what happened and whether the movie somehow justified itself.
Others do a good job in these comments of discussing the faults of the movie, but I want to make a few comments on how it unfolds:
************** SPOILERS BELOW ********************* Now, the general theory here is that this is some sort of dream or fantasy. I was only half watching by the end but that seems to make the most sense. However, even if it's a fantasy it's still too stupid. Because if it's the fantasy of a successful mystery writer, why is it so dumb? First, the daughter kills a guy for not having sex with her. The writer, who doesn't like the daughter, for no good reason helps her cover it up, and later sleeps with the old handyman to distract him from evidence. No competent mystery writer would write anything so pathetically moronic. Therefore, a successful writer would not fantasize something so stupidly moronic. I was going to say some more about it, but it p****s me off just thinking about how lame this movie is so I'll stop here and try and delete all memory of it from my mind. ****************END SPOILERS **********************
Anyway, this film treads water for the first two thirds. About a half hour or so in I checked some comments here to try and gauge whether anything would *ever* happen and the suggestion that the ending was intriguing made me decide to keep watching. Big Mistake.
After an hour of nothing much happening except Sagnier prancing around naked (really, the nudity is the only reason to watch this), finally something happens, but it's all ridiculously, painfully stupid. I found the last part just agonizing to sit through yet wanted to see what happened and whether the movie somehow justified itself.
Others do a good job in these comments of discussing the faults of the movie, but I want to make a few comments on how it unfolds:
************** SPOILERS BELOW ********************* Now, the general theory here is that this is some sort of dream or fantasy. I was only half watching by the end but that seems to make the most sense. However, even if it's a fantasy it's still too stupid. Because if it's the fantasy of a successful mystery writer, why is it so dumb? First, the daughter kills a guy for not having sex with her. The writer, who doesn't like the daughter, for no good reason helps her cover it up, and later sleeps with the old handyman to distract him from evidence. No competent mystery writer would write anything so pathetically moronic. Therefore, a successful writer would not fantasize something so stupidly moronic. I was going to say some more about it, but it p****s me off just thinking about how lame this movie is so I'll stop here and try and delete all memory of it from my mind. ****************END SPOILERS **********************
- scarletminded
- Aug 13, 2004
- Permalink
When I took freshman English in high school, they told me that using the plot device 'and then they all woke up and it was a dream' was very poor writing. I bring this to your attention, as this is the device essentially used in this movie. I can think of no bigger waste of time than viewing this movie. It makes little to no sense, it is pretentious and it is a very a hard to determine any meaning. Can I have the 90 minutes of my life back that I spent on this foolish movie? I would like to meet anyone who thinks this is a good movie. I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell them. Go see something good like the French Connection, The Third Man or Long Hot Summer. Even Wayne's World 2 is a much better use of your time.
This is the most boring movie I've ever seen. Nothing happened the first 80 minutes and then the plot was bad also. I was waiting and waiting for something thrilling/good/exiting to happen because of the good rating on this website. I wasted my time.
- marleenschipper
- Jul 20, 2021
- Permalink
- paolo_davies
- Apr 8, 2005
- Permalink
It's no mystery why this movie's publicity stills are limited to just one scene of a bikini-clad blonde - photos of many other scenes wouldn't be permitted to be displayed in public. The mystery is how this movie managed to get an R rating instead of the X, or at least NC-17, it deserves. This movie has all the elements of a typical porno flick: gratuitous closeups of body parts, sexual situations galore, dirty language, and a contrived plot that's as full of holes as the underwear the actors occasionally bother to put on. I was disappointed to see Charlotte Rampling stoop to participate in such a sick endeavor. Billing this as a mystery or a drama is nothing short of fraudulent.
This movie can be summed up with one simple word: INCOHERENT.
THIS MOVIE IS AN INCOHERENT MESS. IT MADE NO SENSE AND IS DEVOID OF CLEVERNESS.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many moviegoers do not understand that just because a movie is lacking a clear, linear sequence of events, does not mean that the movie was clever. A good way to gauge the measure of cleverness is the extent to which the plot changes from what appears to be incoherent at first, to fully coherent by the end. Considerable effort may be required of the viewer to sort it out, but regardless, the plot must be inherently coherent by the end, if there is to be any basis for claims of "cleverness". The mere fact that so many people in the IMDB forum are trying to extract a semblance of a plot from this mess is proof that the incoherence was never resolved, and as such, claims of cleverness are truly bizarre.
THERE IS NOTHING WHATSOEVER CLEVER ABOUT THIS MOVIE.
Only if questions are first raised and subsequently answered in a creative, original, and less than overt manner, will any amount of genuine skill be required of the writer. If no questions are ever answered, there can be no cleverness, period. Without answers, all you can have is ambiguity layered over ambiguity. Any idiot can idle away time thinking up layered ambiguities to their hearts content, but it requires no cleverness whatsoever to do this. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself, and unless you are mentally handicapped, you will discover that even without thinking hard at all, you will be able to think up some ambiguous scenarios that are every bit as "clever" as this incoherent mess.
Why should a writer and director who have the extraordinary privilege of producing a movie that will be shown in public theaters in different countries be praised for doing nothing more than what any average eighth grade student could do for their weekly writing assignment? Isn't it a given that Ozon and Bernheim are sitting back and having themselves a big belly laugh at the expense of the gullible public? Anyone who takes exception to that characterization may be motivated to try to identify anything in this movie that was possessed of more cleverness than an eighth-grader could be expected to produce, but if anyone should be so motivated, I am confident that you will fail. The reason? Simple. There was absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, zilpo, in this movie, that suggested, in any remote or contrived way, anything that resembles cleverness. Nada. Zilch. Zilpo.
Whereas a lot of people will claim that the reason that they like such incoherent nonsense is that it challenges them, the truth is much more likely that they like it because there is no thinking to it all, either on the part of the writer or the viewer!
The main reason that I rented this movie is that on the box I read that Ebert and Roper gave it "Two thumbs up, WAY up!" Well, suffice to say that forever more, those two bozos have lost credence with me. Ebert and Roper, if by chance either of you bozos stumbles across this, I challenge the two of you to put your pea brains together and try to come up with a coherent justification for why you think that there is anything in this story that required any amount of cleverness on the part of the writer. If you do that, it goes without saying that it will be every bit as rambling and incoherent as this movie was, but it might be an educational exercise for you to try anyway, because it would force you to really think for once and acknowledge the general lack of honesty in your reviews.
And as for the acting ... WHAT acting?!? There WASN'T any!!!!!!!!
THIS MOVIE IS AN INCOHERENT MESS. IT MADE NO SENSE AND IS DEVOID OF CLEVERNESS.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many moviegoers do not understand that just because a movie is lacking a clear, linear sequence of events, does not mean that the movie was clever. A good way to gauge the measure of cleverness is the extent to which the plot changes from what appears to be incoherent at first, to fully coherent by the end. Considerable effort may be required of the viewer to sort it out, but regardless, the plot must be inherently coherent by the end, if there is to be any basis for claims of "cleverness". The mere fact that so many people in the IMDB forum are trying to extract a semblance of a plot from this mess is proof that the incoherence was never resolved, and as such, claims of cleverness are truly bizarre.
THERE IS NOTHING WHATSOEVER CLEVER ABOUT THIS MOVIE.
Only if questions are first raised and subsequently answered in a creative, original, and less than overt manner, will any amount of genuine skill be required of the writer. If no questions are ever answered, there can be no cleverness, period. Without answers, all you can have is ambiguity layered over ambiguity. Any idiot can idle away time thinking up layered ambiguities to their hearts content, but it requires no cleverness whatsoever to do this. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself, and unless you are mentally handicapped, you will discover that even without thinking hard at all, you will be able to think up some ambiguous scenarios that are every bit as "clever" as this incoherent mess.
Why should a writer and director who have the extraordinary privilege of producing a movie that will be shown in public theaters in different countries be praised for doing nothing more than what any average eighth grade student could do for their weekly writing assignment? Isn't it a given that Ozon and Bernheim are sitting back and having themselves a big belly laugh at the expense of the gullible public? Anyone who takes exception to that characterization may be motivated to try to identify anything in this movie that was possessed of more cleverness than an eighth-grader could be expected to produce, but if anyone should be so motivated, I am confident that you will fail. The reason? Simple. There was absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, zilpo, in this movie, that suggested, in any remote or contrived way, anything that resembles cleverness. Nada. Zilch. Zilpo.
Whereas a lot of people will claim that the reason that they like such incoherent nonsense is that it challenges them, the truth is much more likely that they like it because there is no thinking to it all, either on the part of the writer or the viewer!
The main reason that I rented this movie is that on the box I read that Ebert and Roper gave it "Two thumbs up, WAY up!" Well, suffice to say that forever more, those two bozos have lost credence with me. Ebert and Roper, if by chance either of you bozos stumbles across this, I challenge the two of you to put your pea brains together and try to come up with a coherent justification for why you think that there is anything in this story that required any amount of cleverness on the part of the writer. If you do that, it goes without saying that it will be every bit as rambling and incoherent as this movie was, but it might be an educational exercise for you to try anyway, because it would force you to really think for once and acknowledge the general lack of honesty in your reviews.
And as for the acting ... WHAT acting?!? There WASN'T any!!!!!!!!
Forget about Plan 9 or Troll 2. Finally it is possible for me to announce that the worst movie I have ever seen was; Swimming pool! Where the to aforementioned movies where so bad that I could actually laugh of them, this one simply sucked so much that I had to quit cinema for a month, only to recover from the severe traumas it gave me.
Starting with the good thing.. well, the acting was believable, if it hadn't been for the direction. The moments where it can be possible to get into the picture, are distracted seconds later by perverted images of ding dongs and jugs. Sexuality is apparently always good for transitions.
The pretentiousness exceeds any other annoyance in this film by far. Whether it is the VERY flawed twist by the ending, or the sore Lynchian elements, that try to convince us of any sign of intelligence in this movie, one will realise that the director is only arrogant enough to think that the person can actually handle the complex directing of Lynch or, say, Nolan.
this, along with Perfect Stranger, is the absolutely worst thriller I have never seen, period.
1 out of 10
Starting with the good thing.. well, the acting was believable, if it hadn't been for the direction. The moments where it can be possible to get into the picture, are distracted seconds later by perverted images of ding dongs and jugs. Sexuality is apparently always good for transitions.
The pretentiousness exceeds any other annoyance in this film by far. Whether it is the VERY flawed twist by the ending, or the sore Lynchian elements, that try to convince us of any sign of intelligence in this movie, one will realise that the director is only arrogant enough to think that the person can actually handle the complex directing of Lynch or, say, Nolan.
this, along with Perfect Stranger, is the absolutely worst thriller I have never seen, period.
1 out of 10
- mehdinadif2
- Apr 10, 2010
- Permalink
I guess this movie may be about something. I can't tell what. After fast forwarding thru the most unbearable parts I get there is an old stuck in mud writer and a hot young slightly wild kid in the same house. That appears to be it. Terrible movie
- brucekirkland-29879
- Aug 1, 2020
- Permalink
- postmortemMMXX
- Feb 21, 2024
- Permalink
Story:
A British mystery author visits her publisher's home in the South of France, where her interaction with his unusual daughter sets off some touchy dynamics.
Review: first of all how is this movie has above average rating!.
The story is just plain and not interesting the characters are dull, i felt like im watching a teenage film from Netflix, i was patient and hoped the movie would get better at the end but i couldn't wait i was getting bored of this mainly fillers and skipped forward and i am very thankful i did because the ending was really dumb.
I regret i wasted my time watching this terrible movie, so my final score is 1/10 strongly not recommended, one of the worst movies I've watched this year.
Review: first of all how is this movie has above average rating!.
The story is just plain and not interesting the characters are dull, i felt like im watching a teenage film from Netflix, i was patient and hoped the movie would get better at the end but i couldn't wait i was getting bored of this mainly fillers and skipped forward and i am very thankful i did because the ending was really dumb.
I regret i wasted my time watching this terrible movie, so my final score is 1/10 strongly not recommended, one of the worst movies I've watched this year.