A Bigger Splash: Shallow For Shallow’s Sake

A Remake of the French Film La Piscine, Luca Guadagnino’s Version Drains The Pool

Sometimes I think there may be too many movies about vapid, rich people who are their own worst enemies but in the end, come out basically OK because they are rich. Did we need a remake of La Piscine? I’m not so sure.

In director Luca Guadagnino’s defense, he assembled a winning cast, with Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Dakota Johnson playing their parts with every inch of creepy weirdness they could pull out of themselves. (Does Tilda Swinton enjoy making me uncomfortable? She must.) Ralph Fiennes’ manic portrayal of rock star Marianne Lane’s (Swinton) ex-boyfriend is truly a one of a kind, meaning I’ve never seen him that way, and though Dakota Johnson seems a little too old for a Lolita role, she’s gets the surly teenage attitude down pat.

For me, the psychosexual aspect is meaningless; any pain the characters caused or received seems, well, deserved. And in the end when someone dies, it’s a little like, “Oh my, well, look at that. I guess I’m not surprised.”

Also in Guadagnino’s defense, in the end he wraps the whole thing up in a way that let’s me know that he gets it too, bringing the whole mess into focus by making it topical. Immigrants have died in the sea trying to get to Italy and if there is anything sad in the story, it is theirs. Theirs is the bigger splash.

I won’t go so far as to say that A Bigger Splash is annoying, but I am a little annoyed thinking back on it. But maybe that was the intended emotion.