From Do the Right Thing to Now and Then, Guardian writers pick the film that reminds them most of the warmest months
Anybody who has tried to multitask over a Zoom-assisted summer of late will find much to relate to in Swimming Pool, French director François Ozon’s first English language feature, about a working holiday that is anything but relaxing. The British crime novelist Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) has hit a creative wall, and retreats to her smarmy publisher’s summer home in the south of France. Nothing like a change of scenery to help a hit-maker press the refresh button. Our belted-up, beige-clad protagonist stocks up on tubs of yogurt and clacks away at her computer, determined to rack up a handsome word count. But the stultifying heat and the sensuality rising from the home’s other resident, the libertine daughter that her publisher never mentioned having, Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), wear away at Sarah’s calcified bearing (“she has a broomstick up her butt,” per Julie). Over these sweltering weeks, Sarah opens her hooded eyes and comes undone, and not just because she starts swilling gin and stabbing at midday profiteroles with a grapefruit spoon. Ozon’s depiction of Sarah’s awakening is electric, and rendered in a style that is, rather miraculously, both languid and taut. The film is bookended by scenes in an office, an unwelcome reminder that the laws of gravity apply to even the most gorgeously dizzying of dreams. Lauren Mechling
