About the ending?

Intended I guess, after all she's an extremely free creature.

I don't think there's a concrete idea or conclusion to "get". I think it's left ambigious and open to interpretation. I know that's used all too often, but I really think it's the case here.

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screw the book... the movie should stand on its own

when i watched this last nite on Netflix, the ending was too dark to see what was going on... did Ariane drown? did Simon come across her or not? from all the splashing that was going on, in that dark dark sea, i couldn't see chit...

i'm cool with an ambiguous ending, i even enjoyed the entire movie... i see it as the inverse of Last Year at Marienbad, at all levels...

but come on... a few more clues... i even thought, from the splashing, that he actually had found her and drowned her...

look, it would have taken _nothing_ for the director to add a little dialog at the end, with the boat guy for example, to seal the deal on the ambiguity... at least that would have told us wtf had gone on the night before... e.g., "Hey man, I'm sorry you didn't find her." ... or "We'll notify the authorities when we land, ok?" ... or even shoot the dark sea scene with a little more clarity... i can think of no American director that would have been that sloppy (ok, maybe Asylum or Cannon)

(btw, i replayed the dark sea splashing scene at least a dozen times... crappy cinematography is just that, crappy)

Spoiler Alert.

She drowned.

It just becomes a question of whether it was accidental because he couldn't save her or was it intentional. It shows he tried to save her, but it looks like she resisted him. They referenced in the movie that she was a good swimmer which they didn't have to - in fact she saved Andree from drowning - so it looked to me that she deliberately drowned. Except the room service guy says there was a wind...

You have to refer to the book - Albertine (Ariane) dies in a riding accident... And, they did follow the book but made it their own. I thought at first she went swimming and then just disappeared because she decided to be really free of him. But it became apparent that he actually found her in the water and tried to save her and then didn't. He was devastated by her loss. And that's how the viewer knows as well that she has died. The questions that remains - was it suicide or was the sea too dangerous.