French film takes chance on ending

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In theaters

SWIMMING POOL. Directed by Francois Ozon, written by Ozon and Emmanuele Bernheim, 102 minutes, rated R. In English and French, with English subtitles. Now playing, Movie City 8, Bangor.

In the kinky new suspense thriller, “Swimming Pool,” director Francois Ozon follows his 2002 camp musical “8 Women” with a movie whose opening is just comically bitter enough to brighten the day.

The movie, which Ozon co-wrote with Emmanuele Bernheim, stars Charlotte Rampling as Sarah Morton, an impossibly sullen British mystery author of a certain age who’s had it with life in London and who is badly in need of a change.

Her patient publisher John (Charles Dance) suggests that she spend time at his house in the south of France, which Sarah agrees to do, if only because it will get her out of the city, away from her ailing father and allow her a place to herself.

One of the movie’s great pleasures is watching Sarah loosen up and unwind after she arrives at the house. Initially, she’s an unlikable shrew, a grumpy, unsmiling woman with a stinging arsenal of barbs.

But as the fresh country air, the less hectic lifestyle and John’s scenic home begin to work their magic, Sarah succumbs to a happier disposition and begins to live a cleaner life.

With purpose, she gives up smoking, goes on the wagon, takes up yogurt, flirts a bit with the younger, mustachioed waiter at her favorite local restaurant, and even begins work on a new book.

It’s all very pleasant and comfortable, this new life of hers – and so it only makes sense that it must come to a crashing halt.

Indeed, Sarah’s sublime spell is broken with the unexpected appearance of John’s bombshell teenage daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), a hot-to-trot, free-living interloper from France who, on the surface, seems to be Sarah’s polar opposite.

She’s young and beautiful, sporting the sort of body that time and gravity have yet to weigh down. A casual nudist with a haughty, rich-girl air, Julie is a boozy yet likable brat with a noisy sex life that shakes up Sarah’s own life, not to mention the movie itself.

What this odd-ball coupling builds to is two-fold: a new literary direction for Sarah, with the amusing Julie serving as her sluttish muse, and a mystery straight out of one of Sarah’s old books. Exactly what takes place during one especially drug-induced evening won’t be revealed here, but it involves a jealous Julie, Sarah’s mustachioed waiter, a poolside romp – and someone’s body eventually being buried in the backyard.

With a surprise-twist ending that’s wide open for debate, “Swimming Pool” is racy and daring, with Ozon successfully tweaking familiar mystery conventions and making them his own. As usual, Rampling (“Under the Sand,” “Farewell, My Lovely”) is excellent, with her stiff upper lip coming away a bit rouged in the end, and Sagnier (“8 Women”) proves her perfect foil.

For some, the film’s ending will kill it – Ozon wants to grab us, and he goes out on a limb to do so. Still, for others, the risk the director takes will be a blast.

Grade: B+

On video and DVD

“The Core”

Directed by Jon Amiel, written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers, 135 minutes, PG-13.

The big-budget, B-movie disaster flick, “The Core,” is all about heart – the Earth’s heart that is (or its core, to be more specific), which has suddenly stopped spinning.

It’s a doomsday event that causes all sorts of strange occurrences, such as the sudden deaths of hundreds in Boston, an electrical storm that flattens most of Rome, and a riff on Hitchcock’s “The Birds” that suggests Tippi Hedren might want to steer clear of London for awhile.

As directed by Jon Amiel, the film is an end-of-the-world potboiler with a pedigree, one that includes such sci-fi bonanzas as “Fantastic Voyage,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Armageddon” and “Crack in the World,” to name a few.

In an effort to jump-start the core before we’re all barbecued by the sun, a rag-tag team of scientists are plucked from their everyday lives, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and given what can only be described as the world’s largest drill bit, a gleaming phallus outfitted with supercharged laser beams strong enough to cut through almost anything, except, as we learn in one crucial scene, “diamonds the size of Cape Cod!”

Taking to the terra firma with a terror, this gung-ho group-played by Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Tcheky Karyo and Bruce Greenwood – starts drilling toward the Earth’s core, where they hope to deploy the bombs in an effort to start a ripple that will get the core spinning.

Good luck to them.

What’s unique about “The Core” is that it keeps its testosterone in check; the scientists and terranauts have little of the dumb swagger and strut contemporary audiences have come to expect from these sorts of films, which is a relief.

Boosted by a fine cast that manages to sell Layne’s purple script, the movie never really seems to stop. It just keeps going, just keeps drilling, just keeps moving, offering a wild ride in the process, one that’s just absurd enough to enjoy.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.