formulas well known to the elderly devotees of Inspector Durwell.
There are comic elements -- like Franck's disco-stud dance moves and the house's caretaker, an obliging rustic named Marcel (Marc Fayolle) -- that are made even funnier by being played in life-and-death earnest. The characters in cheap mystery novels, after all, don't realize what they are: they think they are loyal servants, misunderstood young girls, innocent cafe waiters and plucky, curious English mystery writers. This time, though, the joke is on us.
Swimming Pool, Ozon's first English-language film (with a bit of French thrown in for local color), is 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. After that, the story itself seems to evaporate like the mist over the pool's luminous blue surface. The movie is alluringly insubstantial, like the light and air of the Luberon. You can't hold onto it, but it lingers in your senses and plays tricks with your memory.
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