Slippery and seductive, Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash is a film that resists easy categorization, although “erotic melodrama-cum-thriller” is a serviceable description of its tone. The feature is the latest collaboration between the filmmaker and Tilda Swinton, who portrays aging rock star Marianne Lane. Recuperating from vocal surgery, the glam icon is in the middle of an extended holiday on the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria with her documentarian boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). Their lovemaking and mud baths are cut short by the unexpected arrival of Marianne’s former flame and producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) with his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson). Voluble and self-absorbed, Harry steamrolls his way into the couple’s villa and takes over their vacation, with the not-so-subtle intention of wheedling his way back into Marianne’s heart. Penny, meanwhile, just lounges and smokes, eyeing everyone (especially Paul) with bored, slinky amusement.
In essence, A Bigger Splash is a volatile, character-centered tragedy about these four characters’ efforts to inveigle and wound one another. Adapting loosely from the 1969 Jacques Deray feature La Piscine, Guadagnino constructs his film on an aesthetic substrate of sun-kissed Continental affluence and an emotional foundation of rock 'n' roll at its most ravenous and dead-eyed. The result is akin to one of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels as envisioned by Nicolas Roeg, with dribbles of Sofia Coppola’s glum ennui and celebrity absorption. (Indeed, Guadagnino’s feature contains echoes of the Mick Jagger vehicle Performance, co-helmed by Roeg.) Superbly directed and shot, the film is nonetheless sustained by the four lead performances, with Fiennes’ live wire portrayal of the arrogant, exhausting Harry stealing the show. Doubtlessly, some viewers will find A Bigger Splash’s generic and narrative unruliness exasperating, but the film will prove invigorating to those who crave a sensual, unpredictable adult drama about human frailty.
A Bigger Splash opens Friday, May 20 at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema and Tivoli Theatre.
