SWIMMING POOL

Diving into mommy issues with Cecilia Corrigan

Charlotte Rampling is an English mystery writer out of ideas. Her publisher—who she may be involved with—offers his house in the south of France for her to get unblocked. While there, his estranged daughter, played by Ludivine Sagnier, shows up unexpectedly to torment and tease Rampling with trainwreck habits and nightly bar hookups. Despite this—or because of this—a bond forms and Rampling is inspired to write again. That is, until a senseless crime happens. As this is a François Ozon film it is in no way as simple as that plot summary suggests. After all, the prolific French director is the patron saint of Cinema Dirtbag, ever since Double Lover messed with our heads so much we had to start a Substack. In Swimming Pool, not only does Ozon contrast British frostiness against the uninhibited bodies of the Côte d’Azur, he calls into question the bounds of narrative itself with a c’est la vie disregard for convention.

For writer, performer, and newest dirtbag Cecilia Corrigan, Swimming Pool was much more than a no tanlines-Eurothriller. Corrigan walks us through the effect that Swimming Pool had on her young gay brain, the mommy and brat vibes that smolder between Rampling and Sagnier, and why psychological entanglement is hotter than any sex scene. —Brian J Davis

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BRIAN J DAVIS: So how old were you when you saw this?

CECILIA CORRIGAN: I think I saw it in college, or right after college. I would have been too young to see it when it came out. But I was already searching for ways to understand who I was and this was one of the movies that I remember being like, huh, that seems kind of on the nose.

BJD: I remember when Emily and I first met you I commented after, she’s just like the girl from Swimming Pool.

CC: You did tell me that before! Extremely flattering!

BJD: One thing I’ve noticed during this viewing is just how modeled Charlotte Rampling is on Patricia Highsmith. The drinking, the isolated misanthropy. But nowadays she’d have to be on IG selling her mystery brand.

CC: In my memory of watching this, Charlotte is so hot. But they dressed her so frumpy.

BJD: Charlotte Rampling is one of the most beautiful actors of European cinema of the ‘70s and ‘80s and this is really playing against who she is.

CC: She’s too hot. Like, the high-waisted balloon trousers.

BJD: I think there’s another level of what you’re finding hot about her.

CC: I might have already seen this at the time that I was in on the joke and I was just  like, oh, hot. But I definitely saw it before Love Crime.

BJD: You introduced us to the brilliance of Love Crime. That’s your peak Ludivine Sagnier movie, isn’t it?

CC: With Love Crime, it was I know what I’m looking at. And I was basically looking for a Kristin Scott Thomas in my life at that point. And maybe I found her, maybe not.

BJD: This scene speaks to me. If you grow up Catholic and you’re at Grandma’s house, you do have to take down the terrifying portrait of Jesus in agony from above the bed if you want a good night’s sleep.

CC: I so remember Charlotte when she’s shopping for her chateau food, taking those two gigantic yogurts and thinking that was a lot of yogurt.

BJD: The yogurt comes back in! What’s interesting for me is, compared to something like Double Lover, this is very restrained and it’s perfect for a character who is totally restrained. But, real world thought: I can’t imagine a single editor that would let a writer into their vacation home in the south of France.

CC: Well, it seems like they’re fucking.

BJD: So you think that there was a previous relationship that they had?

CC: He just called her darling over the phone.

BJD: And he can’t come to visit. That does track. If this was an app conversation he’d be like: Sorry, killer work week, TBH. Maybe later?

[At this point Brian lets slip a theory about the big twist ending and Cecilia refuses to believe it.]

CC: Oh, my God. I never thought of that before.

BJD: We’ll come back to that. Let’s talk about Ludivine’s double denim and 2003 tresses looking so dirty.

CC: That’s Bedhead spray from CVS. Okay, we’re getting the vibe check that Ludivine is hot. Like, really otherworldly hot and almost in a surreal way… almost like a fantasy of hotness. I’m really on board with your take.

[Brian gives a “just wait and see” look]

CC: She’s so angry at Ludivine: She’s creating all this chaos around me. She’s creating such a tumult within me. I don’t know what’s happening. It’s as if my neatly ordered life has been turned into a chaotic passionate mess with just a glance at—

BJD: Her American Apparel terrycloth shorts?

CC: I definitely had a pair of those. In fact I still do. It’s Indy Sleaze at its finest. Oh, my God, now she’s swimming naked. That’s actually such a beautiful shot with the leaves. And now it’s almost as if Ludivine is oppressively in Charlotte’s face. The belly button. This was a moment that I definitely came to understand something.

BJD: Now Char is bringing the British in a moment of temptation. Nature is horrifying.

CC: Oh my god, she looks so mad. She looks like she just wants to shut her up? And there’s the giant bowl of yogurt.

BJD: You just know the director observed someone once who ate an obsessive, ungodly amount of yogurt and filed it away under “symbol of repression.”

CC: Look at how much yogurt that is. Just the idea of eating that much yogurt makes me feel insane.

BJD: Emily and I once had lunch in Chinatown in L.A. with a producer and he drank—I’m not joking—eight Diet Cokes in an hour. No bathroom break.

CC: That’s a lot of Diet Cokes.

BJD: Oh, and someone warned us about the Diet Cokes going in.

CC: What?

BJD: “By the way, he’s going to order a lot of Diet Coke. It’s just his thing.” We were like, no. That is hiding something.

CC: She’s wishing she could eat the foie gras with Ludivine.

BJD: That look she gives a spying Charlotte. You can’t control me.

CC: You think that’s what that look says? I think it says something else.

BJD: Like: this could be yours? I think it’s both of those things. Lover slash mother, right?

CC: It’s a tension I know well.

CC: Ugh, this reminds me I need to get a spray tan and highlights now that the light’s coming back. You know what else is weird I just realized? When we first saw Ludivine in the swimming pool it was half covered. And she came from under that side.

BJD: From the mysterious unknown side?

CC: It’s strange and uncanny. It’s almost as if she came out from under the pool.

BJD: In a film called... Swimming Pool!

CC: Look at that looming vagina. Oh wait, it’s not a vagina.

BJD: It’s all Frank.

CC: Why is he suddenly looming?

BJD: I think we’re in someone’s fantasy, but who?

CC: You’re right. I don’t think I was reading things that way when I saw it before.

BJD: Well, you were probably approaching this at the time very authentically and attuned to the emotions.

CC: Ludivine’s hookups are getting worse and worse.

[A man in European beach briefs enters the kitchen.]

BJD: True, nudity would be less jarring here.

CC: And Charlotte’s clothing. I was having hopes that her outfits were going to remedy themselves, but then they took a turn for the way worse.

BJD: Burn!

CC: Brulé! And I love that red pool float. Just, like, the blot on the landscape.

BJD: The suggestion of future blood.

CC: Now she’s stealing Ludivine’s swimsuit bottoms. Looking thirsty, Charlotte.

BJD: It’s inspiring her to write something new.

CC: There’s our The Shining moment. She’s putting it all in the work. Just don’t come. Just type really, really hard. Type the gay away. Stare at her bathing suit bottoms and just type harder.

BJD: Now she’s reading Ludivine’s notebook.

CC: She started writing about her and now she wants to devour everything about her.  I’m just going to look at those bathing suit bottoms and type as hard as I can. Very, very healthy behavior.

BJD: The danger of living with a writer.

CC: I just realized how old she must have been, because of her hands.

BJD: She was 57 at the time.

CC: She just looks really fuckable to me. She’s so hot.

BJD: There’s definitely a theme of looming. Which happens so much in life and is so disturbing.

CC: That look with the glasses. I forgot that there’s so much hinged on Charlotte wanting to know Ludivine’s story.

BJD: It is realistic to how writers process the world. The motto in our home is “today’s personal trauma, tomorrow’s opening paragraph.”

CC: She’s looking at Ludivine: Oh my god tell me more, you wreck. It’s so hot. Literally they might as well just be fucking right now. She’s so satiated looking.

BJD: Because she drank story blood! As a writer, are you cautious around details or inspiration from other people?

CC: I feel like I just get so much energy from my own trauma that I don’t need other people’s. I have a complicated enough inner life. I mean, certain people kind of become my muses, let’s say. But usually not until they’re out of my life. I guess I identify more with being annoyed by people using me as a subject. That tends to happen to me more.

BJD: Now they’ve picked up Frank are back home and the French are dancing to techno. Siri, what would be a repressed British person’s worst nightmare? Wow, Frank even exhales French.

CC: This next day outfit. I can see Charlotte going around Brooklyn Heights in this, on a Citi Bike, going to the high-end knitting store that Uma Thurman likes.

BJD: And now we’re in a new movie, the crime novelist is investigating a crime…or is she covering it up?

CC: Look how hot Charlotte is, digging a grave. Her untucked shirt.

BJD: When women work together…

CC: Oh my god, I forgot all these twists. I just remembered topless Ludivine looming over Charlotte. And then Charlotte Rampling’s tense jaw clenching.

BJD: “If you do exactly as I say, I don’t think there’ll be any problem.” They’re getting a real relationship going.

CC: I know. It’s so good. Oh, shit. I completely forgot about Charlotte fucking the gardener.

BJD: She is committed to the crime coverup. This is complicated for you, isn’t it?

CC: I mean, I just completely forgot about this part.

BJD: This is Charlotte’s first and only sex scene. I think this film proves that sometimes repression is good in a plot. It can be so much more intense.

CC: I mean, I hate sex scenes as a rule. It should only be unbearable typing. Harder and harder and harder typing.

BJD: And now a thankful Ludivine is leaving her mother’s novel to Charlotte for inspo.

CC: See, this is so much sexier than a sex scene! It’s even more intimate than sex. It’s honestly the most romantic thing ever. And fucked up. Like mommies all the way down. Layers of mommy issues. Behind the curtain, more mommy issues.

BJD: In the swimming pool, mommy issues!

[Charlotte returns to the UK,  breaks up with her publisher and places her new more psychologically complex novel, Swimming Pool, elsewhere.]

CC: Wow, the ultimate mommy issues hero. Revenge on the father. Not only do you get to fuck the mommy figure, but they then castrate the father figure.

BJD: Cecilia, this is why you’re here. Keep going!

CC: Wait what? His daughter isn’t Ludivine?

BJD: Ludivine really was a creation of Charlotte’s mind!

CC: I completely never saw this ending or something. I feel like I must have only watched the horny parts. Oh, my God, this dream romance fantasy. Wow, this is so... Whoa! Oh, my God, I’m so creeped out. Like, the way she’s shot from behind in silhouette and then she turns slowly and you see the braces of the real daughter, but then it might be the fantasy version. Horrifying. How do you come up with that?

BJD: Well, it’s getting a little Jung-y in there with the shadow self.

CC: I have to compare it to my impression in the past. One: Was Swimming Pool as gay as I remember? Yes. Two: Did I totally not notice the degree of mommy issues in the past? I am much, much more aware now! I just thought Swimming Pool was about how English women are gay and horny and repressed. It’s about that and so much more.

BJD: So much more.