La Piscine (The Swimming Pool). 1968. France/Italy. Directed by Jacques Deray. With Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin. 4K DCP. Restored from the original 35mm negative. Restoration supervised by Filmo, commissioned by SND, with the support of the CNC, approved by Agnès and Laurence Deray. In French; English subtitles.. 124 min.
An erotically charged thriller in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith, Claude Chabrol, and Henri-Georges Clouzot, La Piscine stars Alain Delon and Romy Schneider as a contented bourgeois couple who go dramatically astray when her ex-lover (Maurice Ronet) and his sensuous teenage daughter (Jane Birkin) pay them a visit on the Côte d’Azur. A post-lockdown sensation, Rialto’s 2021 reissue of La Piscine ran at NYC’s Film Forum for over four months, providing a South of France holiday for cooped-up New Yorkers. “If there is a film of New York’s 2021 summer, this may be it. Sex, opulence, a dash of danger. Could anything better describe New York’s post-lockdown mood? And then there’s the epic style: Come for Alain’s open-to-the-navel denim shirt, stay for Romy’s Courrèges-designed bathing suites. It turns out, many New Yorkers have” (The New York Times Style section).