Sun-Kissed Tension: On the Staying Power of Deray’s La Piscine | Features

With the audience surely entranced by the visuals, the cryptic cleverness of Jean-Claude Carriere’s script may not register at first. The plot inches forward as information about this four-sided relationship is parceled out in non sequiturs, passive-aggressive observations, and backhanded compliments. Told that Harry has telephoned, Jean-Paul growls “Any time we hide some place, he’s the first to call.” Marianne invites Harry and Pen to stay a few days—and turns a feline half-smile at a clearly glowering Jean-Paul. As Harry shares an uncomfortable breakfast with Jean-Paul, he asks casually, “Sure you’re not keeping her from working?” Thus do we learn that Marianne is a writer; we also learn that Harry knows Jean-Paul is also a writer, and hasn’t been writing—because he can’t make a living at it. After an impromptu midnight party that finds everyone flirting dangerously with the wrong partner, Marianne presses Jean-Paul to say what he thinks of Harry’s daughter. He responds, “She’s strange.” And Marianne reads him like a book: “If I get you, I should pack my bags and leave.”

In addition to the swirling entanglements on screen, even all these years later the real-life histories and off-screen ironies enrich “La Piscine”. Schneider and Delon had once been the It Couple of the European film scene, becoming engaged a year after they met on the set of 1958’s “Christine,” but somehow never marrying. Delon had broken things off in 1964 with a note that became legend: “Gone to Mexico with Nathalie.” He’d married Nathalie, and Schneider had since married another man.

But though Jacques Deray suggested Monica Vitti, Delon insisted on Schneider. It was a brilliant instinct; the movie proves their on-screen chemistry had grown exponentially in the years apart. The film was also a breakthrough role for Schneider. Enigmatic, stunningly beautiful and thoroughly adult, the character of Marianne was a world away from the “Sissi” films of the 1950s, where a very young Schneider had made her name playing the innocent young Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Jane Birkin was actually 22 during filming, but her half-awkward half-cool manner was perfect for Pen. She had just recorded the notorious “Je t’aime (moi non plus)” with her lover, the 41-year-old French singer-composer Serge Gainsbourg, who pursued young women and wrote lurid songs about even younger ones. Birkin’s offscreen life adds a twist of wry amusement to the moment when, in a burst of honesty rare for these characters, Pen tells Jean-Paul that if people think she’s Harry’s girlfriend, “he likes it best, though he protests, ‘No, no, she’s my daughter!’ hoping they won’t believe him.”