François Ozon's Swimming Pool (2003)

If François Ozon's Swimming Pool had been by Shakespeare it might have been labelled a 'problem play' because it doesn't altogether cohere, but then that's probably the idea: many things in it are slightly out of sync. It stars Charlotte Rampling as the novelist Sarah Morgon with the publisher John (Charles Dance).

At the beginning, when Sarah is going to see John on the tube in London, she rebuffs an admirer of her detective Dorwell novels by telling her she's not the person she thinks she is. Throughout the film the viewer will ask him- or herself who she actually is, but no matter. Sarah is tired, so Charles suggests she relax at his place near Lacoste, Vaucluse, while she works on her novel.

This is when the film alternates between Sarah's wobbly French and the even more wobbly English of John's young daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), who soon unexpectedly joins her at Charles' holiday home. You could call this a generation conflict, but Sarah doesn't take to Julie and her bringing home guys from the village to have noisy sex with, although she seems to be becoming strangely attracted to Julie, especially after the episode with Franck (Jean-Marie Lamour), who Julie starts sucking by the swimming pool, causing Sarah to jealously stop their antics by throwing a heavy object into the pool near them.

But when Sarah discovers Julie has killed Franck she helps her bury the body in the garden and swears she won't tell anyone: very strange behaviour, as if she's playing in one of her novels. And then when she returns to London and sees John's only daughter, who doesn't look at all like Julie... Could it be that most of what we've been watching is merely Sarah's novel theatricalised?