Swimming in a Sand Pool

Swimming Pool is a 2003 erotic psychological thriller film co-written and directed by François Ozon and starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. The plot focuses on a British crime novelist, Sarah Morton (Rampling), who travels to her publisher's upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek solitude in order to work on her next book. However, the arrival of Julie (Sagnier), who claims to be the publisher's daughter, induces complications and a subsequent crime. Both lead characters are bilingual, and the film's dialogue is a mixture of French and English. Swimming Pool premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2003, and was released theatrically in France three days later. It was given a limited theatrical release in the United States that July and was edited to avoid an NC-17 rating due to its strong sexual content and nudity. It was subsequently released in North America on DVD in an unrated cut. The film ignited controversy with audiences because of its ambiguous nature and unclear conclusion which can be interpreted in various ways. In France, many comparisons were made with Jacques Deray's 1969 film La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), starring Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.