Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

19 July 2003

Swimming Pool

2003, France

director: François Ozon

François Ozon's perfectly cast Swimming Pool pits a 50-something British mystery author, played by Charlotte Rampling, against her publisher's 20-something daughter, played by Ludivine Sagnier. They both end up in the publisher's remote house in France, each expecting to be there alone. The writer was hoping to find a quiet spot to work on her new novel, and the daughter was planning to party late and bring home a different man every night, which she proceeds to do. The movie is told from the author's point of view, but Ozon's camera seems to like the two characters equally, which is a nice setup that doesn't really have a worthy payoff. Where it goes depends on how you want to see the ambiguous third act. It's either a mystery thriller with holes so big that Rampling's character would have been embarrassed to write them: thin motives, contrived twists, and eleventh-hour revelations that require us to pretend some earlier events didn't happen (we'd need to assume the publisher never received Rampling's angry calls about his daughter being at his house when it was supposed to be vacant). Or, more probably, it's a psychological drama in which we wonder how much is real and how much is just a part of the novel in progress.

I like movies that blend the mental and physical as a way to get into a character's head, especially when we're not always told which is which — Scorsese's King of Comedy and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut come to mind — but they lose me if that technique becomes one of the movie's focal points or if it no longer serves the characters but instead produces fireworks on its own. In Swimming Pool, the appearance of the girl parallels the writer's feeling that she has arrived somewhere fresh with her new book, that she has found some old spark, but I wish the movie had further explored the connections between the two women — and therefore explored the author's inner life — rather than skimming the surface. Showing us the novel that this character writes when she's on a roll should tell us something about her, but all we get are obvious observations about Rampling being a mother figure or recalling her youth in swingin' London, both dead ends. Sagnier is very sexy, and Ozon creates an atmosphere that is both soothing and unsettling, but without its attractive actresses and ambiance, the movie would suffer, of course, but would also be quite empty when it didn't need to be.

Posted by davis | Link

Other Recent Posts

Other Recent Episodes

Favorite Films