Director Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (not to be confused with Jack Hazan's 1973 movie of the same title that documents David Hockney and his friends) is a reworking of the 1969 Jacques Deray film, La Piscine -- which starred Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, and Jane Birkin -- with plenty of Hitchcockian twists and 21st-century sexiness. From the same guy who made Tilda Swinton look gorgeous in I Am Love, it's really the cast that makes this film seem essential, including Swinton, Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes, and Dakota Johnson. As IndieWire explained in a review from the Venice Film Festival:
"A great deal of that sense of life comes from its cast, whose differing styles, and, in some cases, against-type roles create odd little bursts of energy of their own. Marianne (Tilda Swinton) is a famous rock star, whom we see in flashback as a kind of Bowie-esque (who else?) black-wigged performer in a sequin jumpsuit. However, in an arch twist, she is recuperating after a throat operation and so spends most for the film either furiously gesticulating or speaking in a hoarse whisper. She and her lover of six years, documentary filmmaker Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) seem sleek and contented as seals during the wordless opening; they have sex in the pool of their holiday villa on the Italian island of Pantelleria, then drive to the lake to slather each other in clay and bake in the sun. But the quiet idyll is disrupted by the arrival of Marianne's ex-lover, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), and the daughter he hadn't known he had till a year prior, Penelope (Dakota Johnson). Record producer Harry (who worked with The Rolling Stones in his day) descends on the couple, whom he had introduced, with the force of a hurricane -- indeed, his arrival brings with it an odd hot wind, the kind that makes everyone a little crazy."
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A Bigger Splash is expected February 2016. Watch the trailer below:
