Film Forum

(1969) Lazy St. Tropez vacation beside the Hockneyesque swimming pool (la piscine) for lovers Alain Delon and Romy Schneider — until her ex Maurice Ronet suddenly drops in with his daughter Jane Birkin — and, as a former ménage à trois becomes a ménage à quatre, mortal consequences loom. Music by Michel Legrand. Screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière and director Deray. DCP. Approx. 117 min. In French with English subtitles.

Presented with support from The George Fasel Memorial Fund For Classic French Cinema.

A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE.

Reviews

“SEX, SUN… AND SUSPICION. A STAR-POWERED PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER.”
– Time Out

“ICILY EROTIC! Seething passion and emotional chaos lie beneath the symbolically placid surface of the villa’s swimming pool, which becomes the site for both seduction and violent revenge.”
– Dave Kehr, The New York Times

“Erotic languor turns gradually into fear and then horror in this gripping and superbly controlled thriller... The pool is a primordial swamp of desire, a space in which there is nothing to do but laze around, furtively looking at semi-naked bodies.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“Romy Schneider’s crowning cinematic moment, where she delivered her most enchanting onscreen performance.”
– Manon Garrigues, Vogue Paris

“Very occasionally we see a film so awkwardly yet compulsively enjoyable that it forces the highbrow viewer to own up: one that takes his or her notion of a Guilty Pleasure and elevates it to the status of High Art. Few films pull off this trick as consummately as La piscine. Set in a to-die-for villa in the verdant hills overlooking Saint-Tropez, this icily elegant pas de quatre involves four of the most outrageously photogenic actors to ever appear on screen... Nothing that happens from here on is a surprise, exactly. We sit and revel in the glamour of it all, waiting for those hormonal and homicidal impulses to boil over – as, of course, they do.”
– David Melville, Senses of Cinema