La Piscine (The Swimming Pool)

55th anniversary screening in a newly restored digital print.

Director: Jacques Deray
Starring: Romy Schneider, Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin
Runtime: 122'
Year of Production: 1969
Language: French
Subtitles: Greek

In a country villa in the south of France, a couple, Marianne and Jean-Paul (Schneider-Delon), are visited by the ex-lover of the former (Ronet). Nobility and style are gradually overcome by a subdued tension and a crime changes the terms. Summer, St. Tropez, Michel Legrand's invincible lounge, underpinned by a dreamy cast. Delon and Schneider are leading in the frame, classic, dreamy - and pure over the course of time. The camera witnesses an immeasurable beauty, exposing a wonderful vanity that only cinema can protect from the savaging time. And then Maurice Ronet enters the picture, driving a Maserati Ghibli, unique, capable of making the grand Delon (in a truly daring performance) vulnerable. And gradually the darkness invades. The unseen side of beauty, the dark side of desire, sex that becomes a weapon as well as a weak spot. A second film has begun, a subversion of the urban slackness, a penetrating critique of the bourgeoisie, a portrait of Dorian Gray who rages while beautiful faces seem untouched. The 2.5 million viewers at the first French screening must have been somewhat surprised by the trap set by the great Jacques Deray with the writing support of Buñuel's screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Ilias Dimopoulos