Jacques Deray
La piscina

Here is a film by one of the directors of French-style police films, who here tries to make a noir film in an original way with good initial premises and then flounders throughout the rest of the film.

The plot is simple: on vacation in Saint-Tropez, two lovers, who spend their time exchanging affections by the poolside of their home (Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, who would later become engaged), receive a visit from a friend of theirs, also her former lover, with his eighteen-year-old daughter (Jane Birkin) and invite them to spend a few days with them. It soon becomes clear that the playboy friend makes advances towards the woman, and the other, out of spite, woos the girl, who is fascinated by this man. In the end, only 3 out of the 4 will return from the vacation while 1 will be left lifeless in the pool.

The start of the film with this light that illuminates the eroticism of the two young lovers and the ambiguity that arises with the arrival of the other two charges the film with allure and intrigue. Deray plays all this on the glances, the unsaid, the looks of the characters, on not knowing what they are thinking, what they are about to say. The director, however, stretches these silences, this game of seduction attempting to increase the tension and instead creates a certain flatness, it becomes boring: the classic and banal web of relationships.

In the part of the murder, the film regains tension, partly because until that moment it was unclear who might drown whom, but I find the end of the film very rushed and resolved in a superficial way, thus wasting the morbidity that had been created throughout the film.

By the end of the film what unfortunately remains is only the charm and glamour of certain images and settings, aided by the magnificent performance of Schneider in particular and Delon (Birkin is embarrassing), whereas it could have become an excellent murky noir.