La Piscine

Director: Jacques Deray

1969 / 124min / DCP

It’s trouble in paradise when lovers Alain Delon and Romy Schneider’s poolside idyll at a St. Tropez villa is interrupted by the arrival of her ex, Maurice Ronet, and his rapidly maturing daughter, Jane Birkin. Beautiful people, ravishing landscapes, and quite a bit of ugly behavior add up to make one of the most cherished of French thrillers, where no amount of time in the water will serve to wash this quartet clean. “Icily erotic! Seething passion and emotional chaos lie beneath the symbolically placid surface of the villa’s swimming pool, which becomes the site for both seduction and violent revenge.”—Dave Kehr, The New York Times