Luca Guadagnino’s ‘A Bigger Splash’

Dangerous liaisons at the poolside

Ignoring its Hockney-referencing title, Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash is a remake of Jacques Deray’s La Piscine or, if you prefer, of his The Swimming Pool, both from 1969. Such alternatives exist because Deray shot each scene in English and in French. After editing the two versions, La Piscine came out slightly longer. Deray’s plot was set in a villa in Saint-Tropez (SE France), a locale favoured at the time by the French New Wave. Guadagnino’s was filmed, more interestingly for a contemporary audience, in Pantelleria, an Italian island midway between Sicily and Tunisia.

But the plot is essentially the same: a psychodrama among a quartet which turns into a limp roman policier. Marianne (Tilda Swinton), a famous rock-star, and her boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) are staying at a villa on the island while her voice recovers. Then Harry (Ralph Fiennes), her ex, descends on them with his sultry student daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson). It was Harry who had introduced Paul to Marianne. Although it seems, rather improbably, that Harry only learnt about Penelope’s existence recently, she behaves like a chip off the old block, for, while he sets about disrupting the couple through his relationship with Marianne, Penelope has designs on Paul. Harry also goes out of his way to irritate Paul by revisiting times past. Things are clearly not going to end well.

Ralph Fiennes (last here in the NT’s Man and Superman) is a study in manic obnoxiousness and boorish energy. Schoenaerts (last here as a German officer in Suite Française) demonstrates his versatility as an American this time. Swinton, (a remarkably upper-class lady, even by the standards of the UK stage nowadays), according to Mark Kermode:

is the real star, her decision to render Marianne all but mute (the original script apparently gave her pages of dialogue) reaping silent scream rewards.

Well, perhaps. For some people, a substantial part of the attraction of this film will be the island of Pantelleria, even muter.

Hereafter possibly a spoiler, but the attitude of the local Italian police inspector to events at the villa made what seemed an unconvincing transition. Initially suspicious, but stretched in charge of a force overwhelmed with refugees, Maresciallo turns into one of Commissario Montalbano’s comic opera sidekicks.

NT Live: Man and Superman

George Bernard Shaw’s comedy drama Man and Superman was published in 1903 and first performed in 1905. Set in an upper class London milieu, but one with ‘advanced’ (progressive as we might say) views, it revolves around a radical political activist, John Tanner, and his reluctance to form a relationship with his (feisty as we might say) ward, Anne Whitfield. Simon Godwin’s adaptation for the National Theatre includes the play’s rarely seen third act, a dream in which Tanner/Don Juan encounters Anne/Ana and the Devil in Hell (below). Ralph Fiennes’ Tanner is a tour de force of physical and mental stamina, with only the interval as respite over more than three hours, almost matched by that of Indira Varma as Anne, while Tim McMullan is so cool as the Devil.

Hell: Fiennes and other people

For me, the director’s decision to put Man and Superman in the present day (it starts with Desert Island Discs) rather than play it as a period piece led to some uneasy anomalies – Tanner receives a text message on his mobile phone and an American is the world’s largest office furniture manufacturer - he wouldn't be now, he would be a Chinese, from the country where the phone was made! More seriously, Shaw’s ideas about the relationships between men and women, the dominance in them of marriage

It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.

‘the Life Force’ and ‘political economy’ belong in a remote world, not only more than a century ago but one that the First World War would turn upside down. Moving Shaw’s views to the present day makes them seem backward, misleadingly so when he was, in his time, a progressive and feminist.

The inclusion of the third act was probably a good idea in revival. Its removal in the past was possibly as much due to Shaw’s irreverence for religion – there is much ironic debate about the virtues of Hell as opposed to the dullness of Heaven - as it was for brevity. But the whole play should have been cut, retaining Shaw’s wit

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

and removing his long windedness - a job for a Tom Stoppard.

As a NT Live production it seemed less ‘filmic’ in its use of close-up than The Hard Problem (posted about last month), but, for me, still spent too much time too close to actors whose technique was theatrical and meant to be seen at a distance. Nonetheless we hicks in the sticks remain grateful for the opportunity to see first rate ‘live’ performances which we wouldn’t get near otherwise. Next up here, Cumberbatch’s Hamlet in the autumn I hope.

There will be NT Live Encore performances of Man and Superman later this month and in June, depending on location. Good luck when you are trying to locate them on NT Live’s website.