Swimming
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: James Villemaire, Jamie Harrold, Jennifer Dundas, Joelle Carter, Lauren AmbroseDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-04-01
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sundance Channel Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Swimming
Movie Review: Swimming is subtle, provocative.
Summary: 4 Stars
I agree with one of the other reviewers in regard to the lesbianism issue. I don't think Frankie's reaction to Josee is attributable to latent lesbian tendancies. I think she likes Josee because she represents to Frankie the notion of sexual enagagement - really more with men than with women - and her attention to Josee's modes of operating contributes, somewhat ironically, to an awakening of her own heterosexuality. However, there is certainly enough well-crafted ambiguity in the movie to read the situation many different ways. It is wonderful when Frankie opens the back door of the hippie guy's van and steps into the morning sunshine to walk to work, how we are left wondering whether or not she had sex with him the previous night. It's interesting to consider why he glowed with a smile when she approached him unexpectedly on the street a few days later. The movie elicits the question "did they do it, did they do it?" in viewers' minds in a really tasteful way, but we never quite conclude the answer definitively. I even sensed the possibility that Nicola, Frankie's hapless best friend, might hook up with the hippie guy at the end, finally meeting a sensitive male with which to share her romantic, dramatic self.
Josee is in many ways just as complicated as Frankie, and I got the feeling that if any character in the movie was truely a lesbian, it was Josee. But I certainly don't think that Josee is as much of an opportunistic user of others as some reviewers here have expressed. I felt she was confused and a needy, operating in some ways out of survival (while well-disguised) rather than with a motive to exploit others for her own gain. I also felt that she displayed moments of loyalty to Frankie, just as Nicola did. For instance, after the shallow, jealous lifeguard comes into the restaurant and calls Frankie 'ugly' when she refuses to answer his questions about Josee's where-abouts, Josee comforts her, then trashes his apartment and leaves him. We don't quite know if Josee does it as a response to the confrontation between Frankie and the lifeguard, or independent of it, but the possibility of loyalty is there.
Ambiguity as a plot device is rarely utilized as well as it was in this movie. And as an actress, Lauren Ambrose skillfully and insightfully mediates between the wayward supporting characters around her and her own character's internal conflict to deliver a fine performance, moody and complex, like her performance on Six Feet Under. This is a special film.
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