Swimming Pool

Sarah Morton, an English crime novelist who has stopped writing, retreats to her publisher's house in the Luberon. The quiet ends when Julie arrives claiming to be the publisher's daughter, and at some point a body appears. The ending is what people argue about. Ozon left it deliberately unresolved and explained the method: Sarah keeps mixing fantasy with reality, and he treated everything imaginary in a realistic way so that the audience sees it all on the same plane. What the ending means depends on which layer you decide was real. Ozon had already worked with Charlotte Rampling on Under the Sand, and with Ludivine Sagnier on Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women. On a 6.1 million euro budget it grossed 22.4 million dollars worldwide. Rampling won Best Actress at the European Film Awards. Roger Ebert praised the way a wrong decision grows in its wrongness into a terrifying paranoid nightmare. Who it is for: viewers who like unresolved endings and films that play inside a writer's head. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a solution. The film does not supply one and asks for a second viewing.