Swimming Pool

Swimming Pool (2003) is François Ozon's erotic thriller, available to watch online on iFILM. Sarah Morton, a buttoned-up English crime novelist, is sick of churning out the same bestsellers. Her publisher hands her the keys to his villa in the south of France so she can write something new in peace.

The peace does not last. Julie, the publisher's daughter, turns up uninvited, young and brazen, bringing a different man to the pool each night. Sarah (Charlotte Rampling) bristles, then starts watching the girl, noting her down, folding her into a new manuscript. The tension between the two women curdles into something darker, and then a body shows up by the water. What actually happened versus what the writer invented is the riddle Ozon refuses to solve for you.

Ludivine Sagnier plays Julie with zero inhibition, and her duet with the glacial Rampling carries the whole picture. It is a film about where fiction comes from and how a writer quietly steals a life. The ending rewards a second viewing. Stream Swimming Pool (2003) online on iFILM.