A Bigger Splash review: Time to take the plunge

Ralph Fiennes is obscenely good in this holiday horror story where everyone behaves badly, says Charlotte O'Sullivan
Charlotte O'Sullivan12 February 2016

This sun-scorched erotic thriller (a remake of the 1969 cult classic La Piscine) features an obscenely good turn from Ralph Fiennes as record producer Harry. He is an insecure libertine, the kind of man who if you left him alone with a table would start humping one of the legs in the hope of making the other three jealous.

He’s destructive, pathetic and absurd. He’s also a teensy bit attractive. There’s a fantastic scene in which he dances (and I’m using the word loosely) to the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue. It feels especially right that, during his preposterous gyrations, he looks into the camera. He even fancies us.

Italian director Luca Guadagnino is best-known for 2009’s I Am Love, an exquisite melodrama whose every fibre celebrates the bodaciousness of Tilda Swinton. The British actress is worshipped, to rather different effect, in A Bigger Splash.

She plays Harry’s ex, a singer called Marianne who is as famous as Bowie and Björk combined, currently recovering from a throat operation on an Italian island.

Marianne and her hunky film-maker boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) are less than delighted when Harry arrives at their bolthole, not least because he’s accompanied by his sulky daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson).

Though Harry is touchy-feely with Penelope, the latter seems more interested in being caressed by Paul. Both men moon around Marianne, who lounges around in one gorgeous outfit after another, the queen bee in a hive that’s obviously about to explode.

A key difference between A Bigger Splash and La Piscine is that where Alain Delon and Romy Schneider were thirtysomething peers, Swinton is significantly older than Schoenaerts. Naturally, she’s old enough to be Johnson’s mother too.

Initially, at least, her scenes with the younger actress recall those between Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr in 1958’s Bonjour Tristesse (Swinton even looks a bit like Kerr). We assume we’re meant to root for the sexy matriarch. Wrong. Marianne is not demonised or ever made to appear grotesque but keep your eyes out for a topical scene in which migrants are scapegoated. It’s quietly terrifying.

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1/99

Audiences often resist films in which everyone behaves badly but I think the moral confusion here works. It could also be argued too that the fancy clothes, setting and title (which tips a wink to David Hockney’s famous vision of high-end wealth) mark this out as a niche product. I disagree. I don’t summer in Italy and I’m used to non-pristine pools (my local has a shaky record when it comes to toddlers’ poo). But this holiday horror story got under my skin.

A Bigger Splash isn’t about how the other half live. It’s rooted in something much closer to home.

Cert 15, 124 mins

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