Swimming Pool is a movie I'd been intrigued to see since seeing the trailer a few months ago. First of all the film features a rare sighting of the fascinating Charlotte Rampling who is wonderful in the role of a famous crime/fiction novelist named Sarah Morton. The film starts off with a promising little premise, Rampling's publisher and long-time friend suggests to her that she spend some time at his French Villa (a little R and R and perhaps a chance to recharge her creative batteries for another of her lucrative murder mysteries.

She is at first reluctant but once there, she succumbs at once to the charm of the gorgeous home and the quaint country setting. In fact it isn't long before she plugs in the lap-top and begins pecking away at the keys, so inspired is she by the serenity and ambiance she finds herself immersed in. Now from the trailer and the showbill for the film we know that her solitude is going to be short-lived. And not more than a night or two after her arrival there is a bump in the night that prompts Rampling to take up a table-lamp as a would-be weapon in case of danger and set about investigating.

Not to worry, as it turns out to be the lovely young daughter of her host the publisher (played by Charles Dance). Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), shows up at the house unannounced, and both are surprised by their unexpected (and at first) unwelcome company. Julie is a blonde, beautiful and free-spirited young woman, decidedly promiscuous (as we are to find out) and at first not a terribly gracious host to her celebrated houseguest. Soon, however, they manage to strike up a grudging friendship with just enough mystery and portent to suggest some rather exciting things that might develop.

After all, the film is billed and has been heralded as a suspenseful thriller and so, as a veteran movie viewer, I was on my toes and on the look out for clues to possible intrigue and/or foul play that might come about as Julie makes herself more and more at home. Soon she is dragging home drunken young men as playthings, which while a distraction for Rampling, certainly a source of fascination. So much so that she scraps her initial story outline and begins a new story that she begins pounding the keyboard over, that she saves in a file titled Julie on her computer desktop.

In fact one afternoon Rampling is off to the market and Julie snoops into the lap-top and manages to read a good bit of this new familiar fiction before she is forced to quickly replace the computer as the author returns. Julie keeps her discovery a secret and the two grow closer and upon an evening when Julie has brought home a man that is also a casual acquaintance of Rampling's (he's a waiter at the only local eatery) the three indulge in wine, reefer and when some dancing music is put on the stereo Rampling (probably pushing 60 - but still sexy as hell) is coaxed into dancing with the couple and as Julie drifts back to the couch we see in her eyes something akin to jealousy or something not altogether sane going on behind them. Alas the plot thickens.

Up until this point director François Ozon's first English-language feature is well constructed, what takes place beyond this point is very poorly managed and quite surprisingly mediocre in practically every sense of the word. Not once is there a moment in this film where there is even the remotest trace of suspense - and the event that transpires is completely inexplicable regardless of whether it really happens or whether we are witness to events that Rampling invents for her new novel.

There is no explanation for this mundane crime, it is all covered-up with a matter-of-factness that leaves no reason to fear reprisal or God forbid any suspenseful thrills and the ending, grasps at some sort of Fellini like filial bond between the two women that is so far fetched and underdeveloped that it's beyond ridiculous. I've read much praise about how this movie is executed in it's third act, but I am baffled that anyone would be taken in so easily by such absurd mediocrity. This film held out a world of promise and delivered absolutely nothing. Not by any standard of any film genre.

The inexplicably facile ending notwithstanding, the performances here by the two lead actresses are very well rendered, and they managed an edgy chemistry that kept you guessing and intrigued, but both are shamefully wasted like the finest French wine on an 17 year old American punk-rock drummer. This is no mistake on the part of this reviewer, I made a point of studying it so as to be absolutely certain when I recommend that you pass on this film altogether - Swimming Pool is the worst imaginable tease that will leave you cold.