Sink or Swim

Sink or Swim (Le Grand Bain, 2018) is a French comedy-drama by Gilles Lellouche you can watch online on iFILM. Bertrand, forty and two years deep into depression, signs up for an all-male synchronised swimming team almost by accident.

At the pool he meets men who have all been knocked flat by life. One drowns in debt, another fights endlessly with his teenage daughter, a third still dreams of being a rock star while he sells swimming pools for a living. Their coach is a former champion who drinks as hard as they do. Then someone floats a ridiculous idea: enter the men's synchronised swimming world championship. It sounds like a joke. For a while, it is.

The cast reads like a roll call of French cinema — Mathieu Amalric, Guillaume Canet, Benoît Poelvoorde and Jean-Hugues Anglade, with Virginie Efira and Leïla Bekhti alongside them. Lellouche pulls off something tricky: a film that lands real laughs and a lump in your throat at the same time. It premiered out of competition at Cannes to a standing ovation. Stream Sink or Swim (2018) online on iFILM.