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Reviews
Swimming Pool (2003)
Spoiler: Sarah is a woman, not a machine
I saw the movie today. I think Sarah feels that everybody sees her as an object, not as a woman with sexual longings and desires. (You know, the same way we think of our parents or grandparents.) I don't think she ever had an affair with John. John simply seems as the only Male (sexual) Connection she has in her life. She gets jealous of the new writer, because he is flavour of the week with the publisher John. She craves for some attention, not as a money making machine, but as a WOMAN. She leaves for France, and tries to leave the mother-side of her womanhood behind (even if just for a little while) She finds it hard (because she still phones her father to see if he is all right, but only once in the beginning.) She doesn't want to be seen as a mother, but as a woman. She feels weird getting in touch with her sexual side. Our true selves always come out if there is no one watching over your shoulder, but there always is. That is why she removes the cross from the wall, because she feels uncomfortable going on this journey with God watching over her shoulder.
She meets Marcel and Franck. She finds Franck attractive, but she is so used to the way that people see her and she actually sees herself, that she doesn't make a real effort to flirt with him. She forms this fantasy alter-ego named Julie. Julie is everything Sarah longs to be. Everyone sees her as an object of desire. Julie is the manifestation of the journey that Sarah is on. Julie is free and very in touch with all aspects of her sexuality. Many woman find it hard to get comfortable with certain aspects of sexuality, because they are brought up that only "bad girls" do certain things. Things like abortion, masturbation and oral sex are often things that woman battle with. Julie has scars that seems to have connotations to childbirth, but I think it is a visual way to lead the viewer to think of another element associated with "bad girls" namely abortion. Therefore, Julie is the one masturbating, having oral sex and maybe having abortions, not Sarah (but Sarah is in fact the one making peace with these (foreign) concepts. Julie attacks Sarah as a moral prude that is too scared to do the things she writes and thinks about. This is merely a personification of the battle raging within Sarah.
Sarah and Julie then become friends, which shows that she is making peace with herself. The killing of Franck doesn't actually happen, it merely shows that she is reaching the end of her journey. She is now willing to do the things she writes, thinks and fantasize about. The burying of "dead Franck" symbolises the burial of the "old" Sarah. That is when she tries out the NEW Sarah on old man Marcel. He was about to dig up the "old" Sarah, and the "new" Sarah wouldn't let that happen. Also, he won't reject her, because he can't believe his luck. Julie gives her a book that her mother wrote. This just shows that the fantasy of Julie resulted in a new book, as well as a new chapter in Sarah's life. The viewer can clearly see a transformation in the way Sarah is presented. In the beginning she is stern and her clothing is very unflattering. She drinks whiskey early in the morning, even when the man at the bar is drinking coffee. She is more of a man than he is! During the movie you can clearly see that Sarah's clothing becomes more and more feminine.
At the end she is dressed very pretty and ladylike. She goes to John and proposes her new book, but he shoots it down. However, Sarah now has the courage to offer herself to someone else who will look at her differently, since John makes it clear that he feels more comfortable seeing her as a money-making machine in stead of a sexual object. The waving at the end is simply a way of showing that Sarah does not need Julie anymore. Sarah now feels free enough to truly live as a multi facetted person.
So Fantasy Julie never exists as a real person, neither does any of the men she has sex with. They simply personify emotional, sexual and spiritual concepts Sarah encounters on her journey to sexual freedom. She actually met the person named Franck, but he merely became part of her fantasy. John has a daughter named Julie, and her mother was probably killed in an accident. But the person Julie has nothing to do with fantasy Julie. Sarah resented John for not seeing her in a sexual way, and that lead to the creation of a persona that shared her resentment towards John's sexuality. Julie said he was the king of orgies. So he (John) will shag everyone, except lonely Sarah.