What is Luca Guadagni­no adding to his extend­ed cut of A Big­ger Splash?

Luca Guadagni­no is hav­ing what Hol­ly­wood insid­ers call ​“a moment,” which is what you say when more than one thing hap­pens to a famous per­son at a sin­gle time. The Ital­ian film­mak­er brought his tal­ents to the States for the first time in his teen can­ni­bal dra­ma Bones And All, now approach­ing release with well-received fes­ti­val berths in Venice and New York, and he’s kept his PR momen­tum rolling by announc­ing an unex­pect­ed project sure to stir his grow­ing fanbase.

In an inter­view with Vari­ety pub­lished over the week­end, one offhand­ed line men­tions that Guadagni­no teased his upcom­ing ten­nis romance Chal­lengers (in which Zen­daya is caught between cham­pi­ons Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) as well as an extend­ed cut of his 2015 film A Big­ger Splash titled, per­fect­ly, An Even Big­ger Splash. The three-hour-plus ver­sion, which adds 70 min­utes to the run time of the orig­i­nal, first played at Göte­borg Film Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year. But the diehards-only director’s rework will soon be avail­able far and wide with a prop­er release, though whether that will be in brick-and-mor­tar cin­e­mas or stream­ing chan­nels online has yet to be seen.

For those with fond mem­o­ries of the sexy, lux­u­ri­ant thriller inspired in part by Jacques Deray’s 1969 film La Piscine, this is a sur­pris­ing treat, though it does pose the ques­tion of what miss­ing pieces need­ed to be restored in the first place. The film — a love-crossed quar­tet between con­va­lesc­ing rock star Til­da Swin­ton, her man Matthias Schoe­naerts, her ex Ralph Fiennes, and his daugh­ter Dako­ta John­son in tow — thrives on sug­ges­tion and inti­ma­tion, leav­ing ambi­gu­i­ty in key ques­tions of who slept with whom or who wit­nessed which murder.

The most under­de­vel­oped aspect of the script was its sub­tex­tu­al coun­ter­point involv­ing North African immi­grants mak­ing the per­ilous trip across the Mediter­ranean to under­score the solip­sism and moral cor­ro­sion of the main char­ac­ters, though it’s unclear whether that would ben­e­fit more from expan­sion or scal­ing back. Per­haps a deci­sive move in either direc­tion would do the trick; this is the sort of hot but­ton one push­es or doesn’t.

Guadagnino’s melo­dra­ma of jeal­ousy and regret plays out under a hot, lazy sum­mer sun, its rays beat­ing down in after­noons spent loung­ing pool­side until it’s time for din­ner and danc­ing. It’s a vibe the char­ac­ters wish they could live in for­ev­er, and an extend­ed cut would ser­vice our same yearn­ing to keep the hang­out going for as long as pos­si­ble. Maybe they can fit anoth­er Rolling Stones karaōke sesh in there.

A release date for An Even Big­ger Splash has yet to be set.