Swimming Pool

Swimming Pool is a crime thriller about Sarah Morton, a British writer of detective novels who accepts an offer from her publisher, John Bosload, to stay at his house in southern France. She wants quiet and a chance to work on something new, but her plans are disrupted when Bosload's daughter Julie turns up at the villa. The two women are very different, and their uneasy coexistence gradually shifts the visit toward a crime.

The film was directed by François Ozon, his fifth feature in a career of twenty, made between 8 Women and Five Times Two. He wrote the screenplay with Emmanuèle Bernheim, and Olivier Delbosc and Marc Missonnier produced. Charlotte Rampling plays Sarah, with Ludivine Sagnier as Julie, Charles Dance as Bosload, and supporting turns from Marc Fayolle, Jean-Marie Lamour and Mireille Mossé. It is a British-French production, released in May 2003 with a runtime of 102 minutes.

Swimming Pool took about 22 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10, while on TMDB it sits at 6.5 from a larger number of votes, so the two audiences broadly agree on the film without either rating being especially high. The cast and the director's name were evidently the main draw rather than a broad critical or popular breakthrough, and the film remains a mid-scale entry in Ozon's filmography.