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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Warning: This Q&A contains plot spoilers....
Q. What was the starting point for The Swimming Pool?
A. After 8 Women, I felt an
urge to return to something more intimate and simpler, with fewer
characters. Naturally, I wanted to work with actresses who were
familiar to me, with whom relations would be less complicated.
Charlotte Rampling came to mind immediately because Under The
Sand had been a fine experience for both of us.
Originally, Ludivine’s part was going to be a boy’s.
But I thought it would be more interesting to deal with a relationship
between two women and I was especially keen to explore the kind
of relationship I had touched on in 8
Women between Gaby (Catherine Deneuve) and Louise (Emanuelle
Beart).
The decision to cast Charlotte Rampling opposite Ludivine Sagnier
provided an opportunity to examine a mother/daughter relationship
and also to confront an experienced actress with a young one.
I have a sense that I gave Ludivine insufficient attention on
8 Women, compared to the other actresses.
And also, she was playing a tomboy. Now I wanted to give her a
part that would be more fun, a sexy bimbo part. As a result, she
got herself into shape physically, becoming a kind of Mediterranean
Marilyn Monroe.
Q. What made you want to make a film about the creative process?
A. I kept being asked, ‘How can you make so many films,
one after another? What inspires you?’ It occurred to me
that the best way of answering these questions might be to project
myself on the character of an English lady novelist, rather than
offering an analysis of myself as a film-maker. Where do writers
find their inspiration? How does one make up a story? What is
the connection between fiction and reality?
Sarah Morton needs solitude for her work, she needs to lock herself
up in a comfortable house, go on a diet, live by certain rules.
Then, all at once, reality bursts in on her.
Her first reaction, needless to say, is rejection. She turns in
on herself. Then she decides to incorporate this new reality into
the work she is engaged in. Sooner or later, artists have to come
to terms with reality.
Q. What made you want to shoot in English?
A. Given that the film is about an English writer and that
Charlotte Rampling was cast in the part, it seemed only natural
that the film’s language should be English. And anyway, I
thought it seemed only natural that the film’s language should
be English.
And anyway, I thought it might be fun to try and direct actors
in English, which I speak imperfectly. Charlotte speaks French,
so the difficulty did not seem insurmountable. Also, there is
a play on language.
I wrote the screenplay in French, then had it translated. Shifting
into English altered the script, because some of the French nuances
didn’t come across in English. We had to find corresponding
notions and these did not necessarily relate to theexpressions
I’d used in the first draft.
Q. How did you go about defining Sarah Morton’s character?
A. The character of Marie in Under The Sand drew on Charlotte
Rampling’s own character. With this film, the character needed
inventing from scratch. The part is pure composition. Charlotte
is not remotely similar to Sarah Morton in real life. But the
part was written for her and we did not go into pre-production
until she agreed to play it.
Pascaline Chavanne, the costume designer, and I looked at photographs
of Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Cromwell, PD James….
There is something quite masculine about all these writers. They
also give the impression that life stopped in the seventies.
Charlotte agreed to cut her hair, to alter herself in that general
direction. As the story progresses, her character’s clothes
and attitudes develop. She blossoms and becomes more feminine.
She becomes luminous.
I regard Charlotte as an actress who expands on everyday gestures;
there is nothing narcissistic about the way she sees herself.
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Q. Why maker her a thriller writer?
A. Because I think there is a connection between thriller
writers and screenwriters: style matters less than narrative,
plot and mounting clues. These are what lead us to the murderer.
Screenwriting is the same: an accumulation of elements designed
to bring the shoot to life.
Since Agatha Christie, there has been a tradition of female thriller
writing in England, writers who enjoy describing particularly
unsettling or horrible characters and situations. I met with Francois
Riviere, who is an expert on these novelists, and he was able
to tell me about their psychology, the drinking and closet lesbianism,
the fascination with perversion.
Before shooting, I suggested to Ruth Rendell that she might like
to come up with a story for Sarah to be writing in the film. I
sent her my script and she answered by return, very frostily,
assuming that I was asking her to novelize the screenplay: she
told me she was perfectly capable of writing her own stories,
thank you. Charlotte Rampling found this highly amusing. She said
that Sarah Morton would have reacted in the same way.
Q. Why the long exposition of Sarah’s character?
A. There are, in fact, two expositions. The first happens
in London, where Sarah is seen in her own environment, with her
relationship with her publisher, the fact that she is an old maid
who lives with her father, her fondness for drink… Then there’s
the second exposition, showing her arrival in the Luberon in Provence,
and how she settles down to work. I feel that it is important
to show all these things, even though it makes for a somewhat
unusual pace because the action proper is delayed: one needs to
enter into the character’s behaviour, the way she sits down
to work, the practical business of writing in a specific context,
the little details of habit. The film is governed by the pace
of the creative process: things gradually come together and then
quicken in the final half-hour, which is full of surprises and
emotional tension and is extremely concentrated.
Q. Right up to the end, you give us no hint that Julie might
be a character invented by Sarah?
A. Speaking as a director, I wanted to show an imaginary world
in as realistic a way as possible - flat - so that fantasy and
reality are shown as equivalents. I feel that when you are inventing
worlds, things soon get very mixed up: when you tell a story or
make a film, you identify with the characters to such an extent
that you end up sharing their thoughts and feelings, you feel
the same emotions as they do.
In other words, in the creative process, things are never simple:
what is true, what is not true? What distinguishes reality from
fantasy?
This theme brings us back to Under the Sand, in which the character
also confused fantasy and reality. But, in this case, the fantasy
is creative and therefore applied and channelled. It is not madness.
You pay careful attention to the way the writer’s body
is altered as she writes?
A. Yes. I wanted to use the cliché of an elderly English
lady uneasy with her own body as a starting point - even though
one eventually learns that Sarah must have been quite at ease
with herself when she was young.
But I also wanted this ageing body to seem desirable. More desirable
than Julie’s. At the same time, as the book is the product
of Sarah’s imagination, one could say that she is arranging
these things in her mind…
Anyway, the main point was that I wanted Sarah and Julie’s
bodies to affect one another. As the story progresses, Sarah casts
off her clothes; her style of dress becomes more feminine; life
in some way returns to her. Whereas Julie abandons artifice. She
becomes more pure. She returns to childhood, having been very
aggressive, a very sexual young woman. There is a kind of ‘exchange
of fluids’ between the two women.
Q. What does the swimming pool stand for?
A. The swimming pool stands for whatever anyone wants to see
in it. I have often filmed water, usually the ocean, which is
associated in my mind with shedding one’s inhibitions, or
with a certain sense of fear. In this instance, I was interested
in the swimming pool as a texture and also as water imprisoned.
Swimming pools, unlike the ocean, are manageable and controlled.
The swimming pool is Julie’s realm. It’s like a movie
screen against which images are projected and into which a character
penetrates. Sarah Morton takes time before entering the pool;
she does not do so until Julie has become a source of inspiration
- and until the swimming pool is at last clean.
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