Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, A Bigger Splash, is a mess. Starring Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Dakota Johnson and Matthias Schoenaerts, A Bigger Splash chronicles an undetermined amount of time between a rock star, her documentarian boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend record producer, and his estranged daughter. While you could consider this a film that is loose and carefree by design (I certainly would), by the time the last 20 minutes roll around, it’s not just disappointing discovering where the movie ended up, it’s downright confounding.
After a surgery to repair her voice, rock star Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) relaxes with her incredibly handsome boyfriend, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). The opening reveals them in various positions of undress and having sex in their pool beside the gorgeous Italian villa they are staying in. It isn’t long before they’re interrupted by their friend/Marianne’s ex, Harry Hawkes (an energetic Ralph Fiennes) and his sexpot daughter (Dakota Johnson). This reunion reignites tensions that are decades in the making. Tensions that were never resolved have now risen to the surface.
Immediately, there is a sense of awkwardness and it’s known that there is something going unspoken. That mood does not let up for the first half of the film. This isn’t a film centred around any incredibly big dramatic moments (until the last 20 minutes). Of course, being an Italian film will invite comparisons to other classics from that region. You could compare the awkward existential moments to any early Michaelangelo Antonioni film. There’s going to be a Federico Fellini reference with any party sequence. Guadagnino is a good enough director to not let you think about those things as his movie is unfolding. But he’s not good enough to let you forget about everything else that isn’t important, but should be, to the film.
Guadagnino is able to direct the hell out of his already amazing actors. Swinton, mostly silent due to the surgery, is fantastic with little to use. Well written, unlike Johnson’s character, she shows herself as a confident woman who is just okay to lie low away from the fame. Schoenaerts is cool and reserved but is able to pull off the heavy lifting when it’s necessary. As I said before, Johnson does very well with so little. While her character may not be the center of the film, she is used as a sexual device rather than a real person. Even at the end, she is an enigma, but Johnson is able to pull it off and make it believable. But Fiennes is the star of the show. Not unlike his performance from In Bruges, Fiennes plays Hawkes in an exhausting fashion and shows to have the most fun throughout the film. Unfortunately, that energy isn’t picked up by the rest of the film.
A Bigger Splash isn’t a boring film but it’s not entirely meditative either. Picking up little bits of Italian neo-realism from older and better directors like Roberto Rossellini, Guadagnino sprinkles those bits around from time to time with shots of the locals bending over backwards for the rock star and her entourage, rarely acknowledging the issues those people go through. You could argue that by even moving the camera towards them and witnessing some of the bad things they go through is enough, but it feels like they moved the camera anywhere else; the director would be accused of neglecting the issues. And that complaint can still be laid. The film tries to create a portrait of the quartet of characters, but the people around them scream for a landscape.
Thanks to cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, there are some literal landscapes on screen. The Italian scenery is truly hard to make ugly, and Le Saux only makes it more gorgeous. Full of yellows and greens, the image is immaculate and earns A Bigger Splash some brownie points on that end. Any and all footage is typically gorgeous from this film, but without feeling like it’s showing off. There’s a bit of irony there due to its characters, but that doesn’t seem lost on the film. The characters are front and centre, but the scenery is never forgotten.
It’s not necessarily where the movie goes by the end that bothers me; it’s that with the mood of the film being established by that point, it doesn’t fit anything that was set-up before it. It doesn’t just feel preposterous, it’s also extremely silly. Loosely based on 1969’s La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), the picture only becomes a remake at that point, and I wish it didn’t bother sticking so close to its source material. I don’t recommend reading the plot synopsis for the original, as its plot is the climax of the remake. It only cares to ramp up the tension in a way that loses any bit of realism that was established and existed prior to these events.
Guadagnino has underwhelmed with his latest film, and this makes me weary of his upcoming remake of another great Italian film, Dario Argento’s Suspiria. the director’s hand isn’t nearly deft enough to better Argento’s film and that shows here. While I still look forward to any of his films, I hope there’s a better hand on the script. The story is key for A Bigger Splash and it never quite has a handle on it.
A Bigger Splash
Pros
- Acting all around is quite excellent, especially from the magnificent Ralph Fiennes
- Cinematography from Yorick Le Saux is beautiful, and understated, at times.
- The mood set in the first hour is almost tangible
Cons
- Last hour loses steam and overstays its welcome to a dumb twist
- Dakota Johnson's character is sorely underwritten
- There is never a time to relate to these characters and their issues.
