Deep End

The pool is often a hotspot of youthful longing and discovery in cinema, and in this 1970 film, re-released by the BFI, Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski brings the generational confusion, pop sensibilities and emotional chaos of late 1960s Britain to a tattered old London bathhouse.

Fresh-faced and virginal, 15-year-old Mike (John Moulder-Brown) takes a job as a pool assistant and learns the ropes from beautiful older colleague Susan (Jane Asher) while fighting off the advances of a randy middle-aged client (Diana Dors) on his first day. Susan is a tease with Mike, whose innocent, growing obsession with his friend and workmate leads him to follow her on a date to a dirty movie with her fiancé and fume over her affair with an older man. Susan is Mike’s flighty, untouchable guide to the world of the flesh, and Skolimowski has fun with Mike’s wide-eyed discovery of sex and lust in all its guises, lending his film a loose, freewheeling feel and keeping one foot in the real world and another in the allegorical world of the pool. Along with music from Can and Cat Stevens, a bizarre, beautiful ending is the high point of this wonderfully mysterious film.