La piscine - Criterion Collection

The bright sun of the French Riviera is deceptive in this languorously alluring exercise in slow-burn suspense from thriller specialist JACQUES DERAY(Borsalino) and legendary screenwriter JEAN?CLAUDE CARRIÈRE (Belle de jour). Ten years after their breakup, one of European cinema’s most iconic real-life couples, ALAIN DELON (Le samouraï) and ROMY SCHNEIDER (The Trial), reunited for this film, bringing a palpable erotic chemistry to their performances as the bronzed and beautiful vacationers whose blissed-out summer holiday on the Côte d’Azur is interrupted by the arrival of an old acquaintance (Elevator to the Gallows’ MAURICE RONET) and his eighteen-year-old daughter (Blow-Up’s JANE BIRKIN)—unleashing a gathering tidal wave of sexual tension, jealousy, and sudden violence. A paragon of 1960s modernist cool thanks to effortlessly chic clothes and a loungy MICHEL LEGRAND score, La piscine dives deep to reveal sinister undercurrents roiling beneath its seductive surfaces.