Focus Features

"Swimming Pool is a sophisticated thrill, with superb psychological gamesmanship, explosive eroticism and a rich elusiveness that lingers in your mind. Through camera movement, editing and music – and Charlotte Rampling's carefully controlled performance – Director, Francois Ozon conjures the bursts of creativity and concentration of an artist. Swimming Pool is compelling, graceful and deceptively playful."

"Swimming Pool offers a sustained atmosphere of fear, a journey of utterly believable eeriness. The exteriors in this film are every bit as gorgeous and idyllic as they were in another impressive movie about a person trying to write a book in picturesque isolation: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. It does capture pretty much the same feeling: the worry that one is either the object of a horrible conspiracy or-worse-going mad."

"A sly, sardonic, superb mystery. Ozon is a true master of mood, and the film bristles with dark sinister undercurrents of bubbling eroticism. Rampling is simply divine."

"Seductive fun. You'll have to take your eyes off teen temptress Ludivine Sagnier to navigate the psychological twists in Francois Ozon's thriller. The director is a major tease. Ozon is screwing with us, playfully enough so we don't resent it. "

"With a little sex, some mystery, a little sex, an appealing title and a little sex, Swimming Pool has what it takes to become an art house audience magnet, especially amid the heat of summer. Charlotte Rampling is convincingly cast as a repressed British mystery novelist. Rampling's character warms up as the movie progresses, while Sagnier's becomes more vulnerable – a good match in contrast that both actresses keenly exploit."

"A tricky thriller. Francois Ozon's cool sensibilities are a perfect match for French novelist Emmanuele Bernheim's elliptical screenplay; Her elegantly untrustworthy narrative knits together clever psychological parrying and cliche mystery elements, then delivers an unsettling ending that casts the entire story in a different light."

"Like any other thriller, Swimming Pool is more and less that it seems, and contains some diabolical surprises along the way. It's well-acted, a convincing story on one level and on another level, it's really something else all together. One of the fascinating things is in almost a Hitchcock technique, it's basically done in terms of voyeurism."