Review of A Bigger Splash (2015) by Maksim B — 08 Jan 2017

Not quite the type of remake of the French 1969 classic La Piscine that some might have expected, A Bigger Splash is a beautifully shot, terrifically acted and mildly captivating drama. Bolstered by the formidable performance of its 4 leading stars it succeeds to overcome obvious pacing and content issues and to turn into a passable character study.

Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) is a rock legend who is recuperating after a voice surgery on a small Italian island together with her boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). When suddenly and without warning the old partner of Marianne, the iconic music producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) visits them together with his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson) a weird emotional quartet is formed. Amidst beautiful cinematography and slow-paced story-telling the four characters are allowed to reveal themselves in a sort of posh character study directed by Luca Guadagnino.

There is no doubt that Swinton, Johnson, Schoenaerts and Fiennes are the biggest asset of this otherwise too slow paced and at moment overly melodramatic movie. Fiennes and Schoenaerts deserve special attention, the former with his powerful and flamboyant behaviour and the latter with his restrained and somehow slightly mysterious charisma. Unfortunately, if you take out the amazing performances you will end up with a movie that could have been much better. Director Luca Guadagnino's delivery builds up several captivating moments of sexual and emotional tension but in the end after two hours of watching it feels as if it was pointless to see the story of these 4 spoiled, rich, egoistic characters. Add up to this several loose ends and unanswered open points (mainly related to the Schoenaerts-Johnson duo) and this initially thought to be crime drama turns into a posh melodrama.

In conclusion, A Bigger Splash is certain a movie which more pretentious, art-house movie lovers will find satisfying. This is mostly due to the cast, the rest will leave you wanting for more, especially having in mind how terrifically good could this movie could have been. Still worth a try.