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Bookmark this pageLa Piscine (1968)
Director: Jacques Deray
Movie review
From Time Out London
Four characters. A Mediterranean villa. Sun, sex and… suspicion. The ingredients are fairly simple in this welcome reissue for a star-powered psychological thriller which has remained underexposed on these shores. Perhaps director Jacques Deray’s journeyman reputation has been the stumbling block, for this is a deliciously languid, slinkily unsettling affair. Romy Schneider is all feline elegance and sphinx-like intelligence as the girlfriend of brooding wastrel Alain Delon. Their erotically charged St Tropez sojourn is interrupted by the arrival of flamboyantly smug Maurice Ronet with teenage jail-bait daughter Jane Birkin in tow. Little is said, but past indiscretions hang in the air. The ’60s trappings and jazz-meets-psychedelia score are treasure enough in themselves, but it’s Deray’s beady concentration on the pointed silences and angled looks which really turn the screw. Bourgeois-scum Claude Chabrol territory, essentially, but done with a more commercial eye for showing off Schneider and Delon’s bronzed curves.Author: Trevor Johnston
Time Out London Issue 2145: 29 Sept - 5 Oct, 2011
Cast & crew
Director: Jacques Deray
Producer: Gérard Beytout
Cast: Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin, Paul Crauchet full cast
Rated: 12A
Duration: 120 mins
UK Release: Sep 30 2011
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