#1088: DERAY, Jacques: La Piscine (1969)

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DERAY, Jacques (France)
La Piscine (1969)
Spine #1088
Blu-ray


The bright sun of the French Riviera is deceptive in this languorously alluring exercise in slow-burn suspense from the thriller specialist Jacques Deray and legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Ten years after their breakup, one of European cinema's most iconic real-life couples, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, reunited for this film, bring a palpable erotic chemistry to their performances as the bronzed and beautiful vacationers whose blissed-out summer holiday on the Côte d'Azur is interrupted by the arrival of an old acquaintance (Maurice Ronet) and his eighteen-year-old daughter (Jane Birkin) -- unleashing a gathering tidal wave of sexual tension, jealousy, and sudden violence. A paragron of 1960s modernist cool thanks to the effortlessly chic clothes and a loungy Michel Legrand score, La piscine dives deep to reveal sinister undercurrents roiling beneath its seductive surfaces.

122 minutes
Color
Monaural
in French
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2021
Director/Writers


Original scenario by Jean-Emmanuel Conil.
Adaptation and dialogue by Jean-Claude Carrière and Jacques Deray.
Deray was 40 when he directed La Piscine.

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by film critic Jessica Kiang.

Commentary

None.

The Swimming Pool: “First Love Never Dies”

The English-language version of the film.

Fifty Years Later

A 2019 documentary by Agnès Vincent-Deray featuring actors Delon and Birkin, screenwriter Carriere, and novelist Conil.

Interview

With scholar Nick Rees-Roberts on the film’s cinematic and aesthetic legacy.

Archival footage

Featuring Delon, Birkin, Schneider and Ronet, and director Deray.

Alternate ending

Trailers

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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