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3rd October 2016 WINDSOR FRINGE

A BIGGER SPLASH

Italy/France 2015 124 mins

Marianne Lane / Tilda Swinton / Director / Luca Guadagnino
Paul de Smedt
Harry Hawkes / Matthias Schoenaerts
Ralph Fiennes / Screenplay / David Kajganich,
Alain Page
Penelope Lannier / Dakota Johnson / Cinematographer / Yorick Le Saux
Maresciallo / Corrada Guzzanti / Editor / Walter Fasano
Music / Robin Urdang

This loose remake of Jacques Deray’s 1969La Piscinetips its titular hat to David Hockney, and moves the action from the Côte d’Azur to the Italian island of Pantelleria, where four differently hellish people tear each other apart in a glamorous villa.

Tilda Swinton is typically commanding as former stadium-rock diva Marianne Lane, rendered silent by throat surgery, now getting away from it all with her recovering alcoholic boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). Into their paradisal retreat comes perpetually aggravating old flame Harry (Ralph Fiennes), a motor-mouthed irritant with a petulant young woman in tow (Dakota Johnson’s Penelope), who may or may not be his recently discovered daughter. Basking in sun-broiled sexual tension, the misfits listen to old Rolling Stones records while Harry attempts to seduce Marianne, and Penelope stirs Paul’s smouldering pot.

We know it’s all going to go Brian Jones in the end, butI Am Lovedirector Luca Guadagnino has cruel fun allowing an excellent core cast (all of whom he has apparently asked to return in his forthcoming remake of Dario Argento’sSuspiria) to spiral into ghastly self-destruction. Things are less certain when we gaze beyond the central foursome’s navels, with background noise about displaced migrants and some local police tomfoolery failing to engage, leaving us concentrating instead on Fiennes’s eye-popping, limb-waving, lip-synching rendition of‘Emotional Rescue’. But Swinton is the real star, her decision to render Marianne all but mute (the original script apparently gave her pages of dialogue) reaping silent scream rewards.

Mark Kermode at www.theguardian.com/film/2016