RIGA IFF online: Peldmāja

Justin Anderson
Swimming Home
Swimming Home
GB, GR, NL, BR
2024, 99', en
Age 16+

 

A gentle breeze of the wind, intertwined with the scent of suntanned skin. As a wife, a husband, their daughter and a family friend arrive at a sun-scorched seaside villa, they find a naked stranger with green fingernails. Upsetting the long-desired tranquility, the mysterious Kitty spends her days observing and provoking the vacationers. Resentments of the past surge between the wife Isabel, a war correspondent, and the husband Joe, a successful but self-destructive poet. As they crave to forget, the protagonists know one thing – this innocent turquoise pool is where a desire-fueled circle of hell starts.

A sensual psychodrama that unabashedly dips its toes into the Greek Weird Wave and Theorem (1968) by Pasolini, occasionally glancing back ironically at the European modernist film fetishization of mirrors and water surfaces. Premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the main competition, the feature debut of the British artist Anderson is based on a novel by Deborah Levy. Transferring the characters to Greece, the director dissects different fronts of conflict – physical as well as mental – within the history of one family. As Anderson says: the family ties holding actors Mackenzie Davis (Blade Runner 2049 (2017)) and Christopher Abbot (Poor Things (2023)) can be unravelled with just one stitch gone wrong. The unraveller, the nymphet, the agent of chaos is played by the Greek actress and dancer Ariane Labed (Dogtooth (2009)).