Swimming Pool Critic Reviews

The tension is never crushing, as it would be in an American job. Instead, it grows by increments, until you realize the movie, in its quiet way, has you snared entirely.Read the full review

Charlotte Rampling is the best reason, though far from the only one, to see Swimming Pool, a mesmerizing mystery, plus a wonderfully sensuous fantasy.Read the full review

The narrative logic of Swimming Pool slips through our hands like cool water, shimmery and light-dappled, leaving behind the pleasures of summer heat and goose bumps.Read the full review

Simultaneously a thoroughly mannered, mischievously artificial confection and an acute piece of psychological realism. Whose psychology, and which reality, remains ambiguous even after the tart, delicious final twist. Read the full review

Working predominantly in English for the first time, the French director has crafted an absorbing tale about the merging of fiction with reality, propelled by contrasting performances from Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier.Read the full review

Swimming Pool returns Ozon to the psychological complexities of "Under The Sand" and his early mini-feature "See The Sea," and he again proves himself a master of building shocking moments from a series of seemingly insignificant gestures and throwaway lines.Read the full review

Ozon misses some chances with Sarah, but Rampling doesn't skip a beat. Freed from the burden of likability, the actress pushes the character from near-farce to near-tragedy, without once appealing to sentimentalism.Read the full review

Ultimately, Swimming Pool belongs to Ozon, and while incorporating a carefully measured, quietly menacing style that summons up vintage Hitchcock and Chabrol, he has made it unmistakably -- and entertainingly -- his very own. Read the full review

With a little sex, some mystery, a little sex, an appealing title and a little sex, France's Swimming Pool has what it takes to become an art house audience magnet, especially amid the heat of summer. Read the full review