Why the swimming pool is the real star of A… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why the swim­ming pool is the real star of A Big­ger Splash

08 Feb 2016

Words by Nick Chen

Woman in black swimsuit looking out over green water
Woman in black swimsuit looking out over green water
A shal­low body of water har­bours deep emo­tions in Luca Guadagnino’s scin­til­lat­ing Sicil­ian drama.

If a mod­ern Nar­cis­sus were to fall in love with his watery reflec­tion, it would be by a pri­vate swim­ming pool and quite pos­si­bly shot by Luca Guadagni­no. In the Ital­ian director’s new film, A Big­ger Splash, when­ev­er the char­ac­ters gaze at the shim­mer­ing sur­face of an out­side pool what they are real­ly admir­ing is their own image – four easy-going hedo­nists with enough time and mon­ey to afford such luxury.

Rather than reboot Greek mythol­o­gy, A Big­ger Splash is a loose reimag­in­ing of Jacques Deray’s erot­ic dra­ma from 1969, La Piscine. Here the swim­ming pool is a pit of won­der in which desire and lust are trans­mit­ted like elec­tric­i­ty through the water. In many ways it is the main attrac­tion – some feat when up against Ralph Fiennes mov­ing like Jag­ger, Til­da Swin­ton as a mute rock star, Dako­ta John­son chan­nelling Jane Birkin and Matthias Schoe­naerts being Matthias Schoenaerts.

From the get-go, the swim­ming pool serves as the lifeblood of A Big­ger Splash. The naked bod­ies of Swin­ton and Schoe­naerts lay dor­mant as the water gen­tly laps the edge of the frame. Tak­ing a dip is akin to flirt­ing, and when the party’s over Schoe­naerts remarks that, swim­ming can take it out of you.” Hol­i­day­ing in Pan­tel­le­ria, a seclud­ed vol­canic island in south­ern Italy, the four plea­sure-seek­ers are with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the Mediter­ranean, but pre­fer their chlo­ri­nat­ed sanctuary.

Of course, swim­ming pools have a long his­to­ry of scene-steal­ing in cin­e­ma – just think of the jet-bub­ble action in Show­girls; the three­some in Wild Things; Jesse Eisenberg’s acci­den­tal arousal in Adven­ture­land; Bill Mur­ray return­ing to the womb in Rush­more; the mas­tur­ba­to­ry fan­tasies of Fast Times at Ridge­mont High and bound­ary break­ing Y Tu Mama También.

At these pri­vate par­adis­es, run­ning and heavy pet­ting are encour­aged, but the dress code is up for grabs. Ralph Fiennes’ music pro­duc­er in A Big­ger Splash is estab­lished as some­one who swims naked with­out embar­rass­ment – a source of con­tention in 2015’s The Overnight, where Jason Schwartz­man is insult­ed by Adam Scott’s insis­tence on wear­ing shorts. Or it could swing the oth­er way as with Dustin Hoff­man in The Grad­u­ate, weighed down by scu­ba gear and shoved under­wa­ter by his parents.

A sta­di­um-fill­ing singer recov­er­ing from vocal surgery, Swinton’s Mar­i­anne Lane doesn’t mind if her recu­per­a­tion car­ries an after­taste of chlo­rine. The pool offers all the com­fort of a giant bath­tub, as it does in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue when a griev­ing Juli­ette Binoche also wish­es not to speak – front crawl is ther­a­peu­tic enough. The same goes in the case of both The Big Bad Swim, in which adults pad­dle through midlife crises in a beginner’s swim­ming class, and The Way He Looks which fea­tures a blind pro­tag­o­nist who feels safer in the water.

When drained, the swim­ming pool is an uncom­fort­able sight (albeit one filled with schaden­freude) which A Big­ger Splash poignant­ly recog­nis­es as an intu­itive sign of human fail­ure. In Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End, the dry pool shapes John Moulder-Brown’s failed romance with Jane Ash­er, who is black­mailed and trapped inside a leisure centre’s chasm. And in Pao­lo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place, the emp­ty space serves as a reminder of Sean Penn’s dried-up rock n’ roll career.

At times, A Big­ger Splash plays like a gial­lo showreel, its waters run­ning hot with per­il and cold with pathos. Dario Argento’s Sus­piria, which Guadagni­no is set to remake with Swin­ton and Jon­son, even has its own swim­ming pool scene – a late-night calm before the super­nat­ur­al storm. Oth­er teen hor­rors like It Fol­lows and Kristy set their cli­max­es at school facil­i­ties, con­jur­ing up anx­ious mem­o­ries of being half-naked in front of a crush, or being sneered at by your peers. In A Big­ger Splash, though, the swim­ming is the real star – a blue ball of ener­gy over­flow­ing with sex­u­al ten­sion, pet­ty jeal­ousies and famil­iar sink­ing feelings.

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