12 films to (re)watch this summer that place the swimming pool as the undisputed star

Whether it steals the show from the actors on the poster, inspires the title of the film or is the origin of a memorable scene, the swimming pool is a crucial and recurring element in the seventh art. Selection of 12 feature films that offer us a refreshing dip.

“I can’t, I have swimming.” Whether in The Pool, La La Land, The Graduate or even Romeo + Julietthe swimming pool always plays the main role. That of a trigger for the plot, a protective bubble where the characters find refuge or a place that awakens the senses. In The Graduate by Mike Nichols, released in 1967, the aquatic space serves as an escape for Ben, played by Dustin Hoffman. In his bubble, the character jumps into the pool in a diving suit and isolates himself from the outside world. He then no longer hears the conversations of those around him and enjoys a moment where he can develop his interiority.

Similarly, in And your mother too by lfonso Cuarón (2001), the pool is transformed for Julio Zapata (aka Gael García Bernal) into a place conducive to reflection, where his mind can wander without hindrance. Linked to solitude, the pool is also associated with partying and romantic desire. A review of all its facets on screen.

The swimming pool, meeting of lovers

Translucent water, a beating sun, a holiday setting: the swimming pool lends itself to the birth of romantic feelings. In Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrmann (1997), the Shakespearean heroes played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes meet in secret from the latter’s balcony, before continuing their interview in the Capulet swimming pool. Scarface by Brian De Palma (1983) and Swimfan John Polson also sees this place as a concentration of passionate love.

Barely mentioned, the term is immediately associated in the collective imagination with the cult film by Jacques Deray, The Swimming Poolreleased in 1969. A microcosm with erotic scope, the swimming pool becomes the accomplice of the embraces between Marianne and Jean-Paul, brought to the screen by the former lovers Romy Schneider and Alain Delon. As the film stretches out, the swimming pool gradually transforms into a place of conflict and rivalry. The couple cracks with the arrival of the young and seductive Penelope, played by Jane Birkin. It is therefore around its waters that everything is played out. The same metaphor of desire is reused in the remake from the film called A Bigger Splashdirected by Luca Guadagnino in 2015, where only the Côte d’Azur gives way to the Sicilian island of Pantelleria.

From sport to leisure, the eclecticism of the swimming pool

As sporty (as the medal-winning swimmers at the Olympic Games are currently demonstrating) as it is associated with relaxation, the swimming pool enjoys paradoxes. In Magic in the Moonlight, by Woody Allen (2014), It is the land of the idle rich who display their perfect bodies there. Damien Chazelle’s multi-Oscar-winning musical La La Landalso features a swimming pool. Nestled in a Hollywood villa, it becomes the epicenter of a gigantic evening. Elevated to a star, it even has the right to its own musical stage by welcoming a hundred dancers to the song “Someone in the Crowd”.

Featured on the comedy’s official poster, the swimming pool also plays a central role in The Big Bathby Guillaume Canet (2018). She then becomes the witness of the progress of the first men’s synchronized swimming team and at the same time challenges the prejudices that stick to the discipline.

The swimming pool, a zone of life and death

If it remains intrinsically linked to happiness, escape and well-being, the swimming pool is paradoxically also linked to death. Place of execution in the series The Handmaid’s Taleit transforms into a crime scene in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood or even The Swimming Pool. So many facets that motivate an immersion in a dark room, between two swims this summer.