Nothing says summer like a middle-aged man waltzing around the neighbourhood in nothing but a bathing suit diving into backyard swimming pools and occasionally flirting with much younger women. There must have been something in the chlorine in the late 1960s, to have seen at least two movies, released a year apart and in different countries to centre thriller plots around private swimming pools in the heat of summer with characters who spend the bulk of the film unclothed. But where La Piscine , which came out in 1969 in France, is characterized by a dangerous eroticism in its crisp, sultry cinematography escalating its tensions to a fever pitch, its predecessor The Swimmer is more picturesque and aesthetic in design, its brazenness rather delineating gradually from a place of high esteem and purpose to one of intense uncertainty and timidity. In cruder terms, La Piscine is a film that rises to explosive climax, while The Swimmer shrivels into impotence. Like getting o...
Criticism, Essays, and Ramblings from Another Online Film Critic. Support me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch, follow me on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/jordanbosch.bsky.social and jbosch on Letterboxd