In the Deep End: Swimming Pools On-Screen

In the Deep End: Swimming Pools On-Screen

7 Episodes

Take a dip in some of cinema’s most memorable swimming pools—those uncanny, aqueous environs where interior collides with exterior, the private flirts with the public, and time seems suspended above the watermark. Serving variously as sites of adolescent sexual awakening in coming-of-age portraits like DEEP END and WATER LILIES, symbols of suburban middle-class malaise in New Hollywood touchstones like THE GRADUATE and THE SWIMMER, and dangerously seductive backdrops for sun-splashed thrillers such as LA PISCINE and SEXY BEAST, swimming pools have proven uniquely cinematic settings—by turns glamorous, unsettling, sensuous, and surreal stages for provocatively charged, heightened human drama.

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In the Deep End: Swimming Pools On-Screen

7 Episodes

  • 3 Women
    2:03:53
    3 Women
    Episode 1

    3 Women

    Episode 1

    Directed by Robert Altman • 1977 • United States
    Starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule

    In a dusty, underpopulated California resort town, a naive southern waif, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), idolizes and befriends her fellow nurse, the would-be sophisticate and “thoroughly modern” Mill...

  • A Bigger Splash
    1:45:23
    A Bigger Splash
    Episode 2

    A Bigger Splash

    Episode 2

    Directed by Jack Hazan • 1973 • United Kingdom
    Starring David Hockney

    This intimate and innovative documentary about English-born, California-based artist David Hockney and his work honors its subject through creative risk-taking. Director Jack Hazan creates an improvisatory narrative-nonfiction...

  • La piscine
    2:03:47
    La piscine
    Episode 3

    La piscine

    Episode 3

    Directed by Jacques Deray • 1969 • France
    Starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet

    The bright sun of the French Riviera is deceptive in this alluring work of slow-burn suspense from thriller specialist Jacques Deray and legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Formerly one of Euro...

  • Water Lilies
    1:24:06
    Water Lilies
    Episode 4

    Water Lilies

    Episode 4

    Directed by Céline Sciamma • 2007 • France
    Starring Pauline Acquart, Louise Blachère, Adèle Haenel

    During a summer in Paris, a love triangle develops between three girls in this provocative and perceptive portrait of teen angst and nascent sexuality. The awkward Anne, the bad girl Floriane, and ...

  • A Poem Is a Naked Person
    1:30:08
    A Poem Is a Naked Person
    Episode 5

    A Poem Is a Naked Person

    Episode 5

    Directed by Les Blank • 1974 • United States

    Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about beloved singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Yet it has not been released until now. Hired by Russell to film him at his ...

  • Fat Girl
    1:26:35
    Fat Girl
    Episode 6

    Fat Girl

    Episode 6

    Directed by Catherine Breillat • 2001 • France, Italy
    Starring Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo

    Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along as Elena explores the dreary seaside ...

  • La Ciénaga
    1:40:56
    La Ciénaga
    Episode 7

    La Ciénaga

    Episode 7

    Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina, Spain
    Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora Balcarce

    The release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beaut...

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