Julie was julia's step sister, its that simple. John abandoned them in France, and wouldn't leave his family in London to be with them.Both girls are real, Julie is just neglected and unloved by her Father.Julie's mom probably did die in an accident and Julie might have been scared in the same accident.I believe the murder did happen, and sara helped cover it up. What in the movie suggest otherwise?
shareRight, but you're still overthinking it. From the time Sarah hears Julie entering the house, up until the final scene in John's office, we are seeing the book that Sarah is writing -- the one she told John she had the idea for on the train. Nothing in between has to be reconciled, because it's a completely different story. The real Julia waving at the end is just Sarah's acknowledgement of the source of the inspiration.
Edward
That's the conclusion that I came to as well.
Everybody wants to be found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtieZvF-LUM
There's no way that Julie or whatever was some random girl from town who was lying about being John's daughter because, when you see her in John's office at the end, Sara is not surprised or anything.. she smiles. Maybe she really just found the girl's diary with that picture in it.. Perhaps it's a picture of the mother? And she then pictures the daughter looking that way... So when she tells John to give his daughter a copy of the book, she says it because she really did get inspiration from her? I don't know.. but it definitely isn't some lying girl, even though that was definitely my first thought.
shareFirst of all I think that the title of this thread really reflects its content as some of the ideas I found in it went slightly too far. That's the point where our imagination started to create completely new stories whereas in my opinion the film is about a process of creation done by Sarah Morton and her rich imagination, a profesional tool she uses while writing her novels.
She must have known about John's daughter, quite likely she has never met her though. Tired of London she's moving to John's house to change environment, get some breath and fresh inspiration. And it works! It works suprisingly quickly and very well. She's happy on the phone informing her publisher that writing has already begun in this 'small piece of paradise'.
She gets inspired by the place, people she meets there, she skilfully merges fantasies together with pieces of facts creating her own story - the body of her new book. She's a bit suprised herself with results and, as she confesses, she doesn't actually know where the story is heading.
What part of the story is based on facts and what is her pure imagination fed by hot french summer and the location - we don't know exactly. She must know about the existence of John's daughter, perhaps the story of her mother too but we cannot establish if it was real. Julie represents her imagination of Julia, John's real daughter, this is how Sarah created her.
Let's recall the first scene where we see Julie and Franc together - at the pool when they are both touching themselves. It's an imaginary scene, Sarah's dreamy fantasy - so is the rest of the story. It's happening only in the writer's head.
When Sarah is leaving John's office at the end of the film that is probably the first time she saw his daughter. The last scene did never happen either. It's just very short attempt of replacing Julie in Sarah's memories with this real girl she met in the office, how different from her own creation. The vision doesn't last long, Sarah's own Julie, the one she knows so well, the one she brought to life herself takes place.
For me 'Swimming Pool' is the film about writer at work and the process of creation.
The only thing I would disagree with pkorzekwa about is that I think Sara has definitely met Julia before. Otherwise why would she look so much like Julie. the rest of the analysis is spot on.
shareJulie does not exist. Julie is a made up character by Sarah.
Your chains are still mine, you belong to me! - The Phantom Of The Opera
But the one remaining question that none of these theories address is why John refuses to speak to Sarah while she's in France.
share[deleted]
Pkorzekwa is on the right track.
Swimming Pool is metaficational: fiction about fiction, taking itself as its subject to comment on the way narrative works. Metafiction is employed by the writer to comment on the role narrative art can play in both reinforcing and challenging the socially/culturally created idea of 'femininity'.
As with much metafiction the film comprises a frame narrative and an embedded narrative: the beginning and end segments set in London are the frame, and the events in France make up the embedded narrative. The characters and events of the frame are 'real' (real within the context of the film), and the embedded narrative is created by the character Sarah from the frame. This secondary narrative eventually forms the basis of Sarah's novel, 'Swimming Pool'. The key is the introduction of John's real daughter, Julia, which is left until at the very end of the film. This contradiction makes us reconsider all we have seen (rather than receiving the film passively), and, once we have recognised the presence of primary and secondary narratives and identified the film as metafictional, we realise we are being asked to see the film as a piece of fiction and to think critically about its conventions and content.
At the start of the film Sarah is presented as character suffering low self-esteem - the way she is lit, the way she is played by the actress, her working relationship with John, and the artistically and intellectually safe choice of staying with conservative, generic fiction (detective fiction is seen as conservative by feminists because the generic narrative resolution is always the restoration of the status quo). Sarah is clearly unhappy, and inspired by John's suggestion that she take a break, she takes a step back allowing herself the opportunity to reflect, the process of which we see in the embedded narrative set in France. In this 'fictional' embedded narrative we meet the fictional Julie, created by Sarah. She is young, sexual, and beautiful, and conforms to the conventional image of the female seen in so many films. These characteristics of youthful beauty and attractiveness to the opposite sex (to Sarah’s male character, Frank) contrast with Sarah’s own self image. Given this is a narrative created by Sarah it is unsurprising that Frank initially chooses Julie over Sarah. As Sarah allows these relationships to develop however, she does start to see qualities in herself that appeal to Frank, and at the same time realises Julie has little to offer other than her body. This eventually leads to Frank rejecting Julie in the pool, and when Julie realises that her appeal is rather shallow she becomes desperate and attacks him. From this point Sarah starts to change. She now appears to have greater confidence, and she acts with purpose. She takes control, moving from an observer to the centre of the action, as Julie - and the aestheticised image of the female that she is - fades.
Given the metafictional form of the film, and considering that Sarah is author of the France narrative, we can see another level to the relationship between Sarah and Julie: that is Sarah (as author and creator of Julie) as Julie's mother (the character is the 'offspring' of patriarchal society - John - and Sarah’s culturally conditioned mind-set). As Sarah starts to inquire about Julies mother, she is taking steps to try to better understand herself. The burning of Julies mothers book many years ago, for example, represents the internalization of patriarchal control as Sarah censored potentially subversive literary fiction and opts for conservative, generic fiction. That Sarah has undergone a change as a result of all this is confirmed when we learn that Julies mother is dead. In an extension of the mother/creator theme, and a metaphor for the cycle of the propagation of ideologies through cultural products, Sarah is 'reborn' through the character of Julie, hence Julie's symbolic caesarian scar. At the end of the secondary narrative Julie presents Sarah with a manuscript that her 'mother' wrote: this represents the novel Sarah goes on to write and publish.
At the end of the film, back in the 'real' frame narrative, John of course dismisses her new novel. Sarah will no longer allow herself to be controlled by John and his values, however, and predicting he would reject it she has already arranged for it to be published with another firm. Asking Sarah what he should do with the book she replies 'give it to your daughter'. Sarah does not know Julia, of course, and rather means for the book to be read by the 'daughters' of patriarchal society.
Sarah's journey ends with a re-evaluation of her idea of femininity, realising her previously held culturally-received idea is chauvinistic and repressive. She has rejected the values and control represented by John and found esteem in her maturity, resourcefulness and creativity. Sarah has a new awareness of the role fiction can play in both maintaining the status quo and in challenging patriarchal hegemony. The self-reflexive nature of the film invites us to reflect on these same ideas and on the way that film works on us. The numerous and lengthy edits of Julies body, for example, make us aware of how the gaze of the camera/audience aesthetitcizes and objectifies the female body; and by revealing at the end of the film that there are two narratives (one 'real' and the other 'fiction') we are asked to reconsider the entire film and reflect on the difference between fiction and reality, both within the film and, more importantly, between fiction and our own reality, to make us aware of how film can promote, reinforce, (and also challenge), dominant ideas and ideologies.
Love your post! Insightful, eloquent and spot on as far as I'm concerned.
Eat eachother! Eat Y'self fitter!share
Now, if Sarah wants John to join her at the French country house, is that because they are lovers? Or is Sarah after John? And Sarah knows about Julie because John did mention his daughter on their first meeting.
For me, the table turns on the last telephone conversation between Sarah and John. She asks him if he will be joining her at the French country house, but John makes up some excuse that disappoints Sarah greatly. Was Sarah looking forward to a romantic weekend with John? And was it his rejection that began Sarah spiralling into her own graphic novel and creating John's unsavoury daughter, Julie, just to get back at him?
Whatever angle I look at it, this film still keeps me thinking, and that to me is the sign of a great film that has everybody looking at it in every angle. Which it typical of a François Ozon movier.
i think part of it has to do with Julie making remarks about Sarah being his mistress.. and just lumping her into that category of women john has slept with over the years.. a woman who thinks she might be special but is not as special as she thinks she is to that one guy..
Julie sort of says all of those things thats lingering in the back of sarahs mind..
But the one remaining question that none of these theories address is why John refuses to speak to Sarah while she's in France.
Actually he does, at first, IIRC (haven't seen it in a while and don't have a copy). One of the clues that we've slipped from the real world into the world of Sarah's book is when she is no longer able to contact John.
Edward
plenty of contact later ... just not with John.
Your theory is a theory, nothing more, nothing less.
Everyone is entitled to think about the film as much or as little as they wish.
It isn't really a matter of 'overthinking'. I saw this movie the first time when it was first released on DVD, and since then have watched it maybe 20-30 times. At first I was very resistant to the idea that Julie was 'made up', but after subsequent viewings I can see that it's pretty much spoon fed to you that she's a fictional creation of Sarah's mind.
The biggest giveaway is probably the fact that the book she writes is called 'Swimming Pool', implying that we've just watched a sort of film-version of her book.
Certain elements of the story are inconsistent and dream like: Franck showing up at the pool and masturbating with Julie, Marcel's eerie little person daughter who exclaims 'The Mother of Julie is dead! It was an accident!' - this is especially strange as Julie appears to be petitioning her father to call her mother at the beginning of the movie...
The deliberate and extensive use of reflective surfaces in the film (water, glass, and mirrors). If you're aware of it you'll see reflections being used very often and elaborately throughout the story - At times we even see reflections of reflections (at one point when Sarah is in her room writing), or a reflection transposed with another image seen through a pane of glass (when Julie brings the first man home for the night and Sarah watches them having sex). You see Julie reflected in the pool as she's sunbathing, and you even see a brief, but deliberate reflection of the two of them carting Franck's body off to bury (again this reflection is seen in the swimming pool). It's worthy of note that in Julie's final scene speaking with Sarah, Sarah's reflection is framed in the mirror.
Furthermore, the idea makes sense based on what we know of Sarah's state of mind, another bit of information which is deliberately spoon fed to us. She apparently has some sort of romance, or romantic intentions with her publisher (she repeatedly asks him to come stay with her in France while she's there, and complains of being neglected by him). In this way we can see that Julie's mother is a creation of Sarah's own state of mind - a state which is further heightened when she comes to France and finds some women's clothing in the closet. Julie appears to be the perfect antidote to the malaise Sarah is feeling at the beginning of the film. Even when she goes shopping for groceries upon her arrival in France she glances longingly, for a moment, at the wines, cheeses, and nice food, before buying two cartons of disgusting looking yogurt. It's no surprise that Julie, Sarah's creation and expression of her own frustrations, goes to the store soon after to buy 'loads of nice food', haha, which Sarah then 'steals' bits of.
Furthermore, the story we see in 'Swimming Pool' is pretty near to the kinds of stories that Sarah writes as an author (sex, murder, etc.). She even puts herself in as an object of desire for Franck, the attractive waiter, and Marcel, the charming and older groundskeeper.
Furthermore you'll notice that John, her publisher, never mentions the existence of this daughter 'Julie', and that his actual daughter, Julia, is sort of an innocent version of Julie.
And then there's the deliberately dreamlike sequence at the end, which pretty much states outright that Julie is a fictionalized and romantic version of Julia. On my very first viewing I thought maybe Julia had been staying with Sarah at the house instead of Julie, but, based on all the other clues, this is very unlikely, not to mention the fact that Julia seems to be unfamiliar with Sarah when they bump into each other in John's office.
So yeah.. After having watched this film so many times I can say confidently that the writer/director's intention was for Julie to be perceived as a work of fiction, and that the film is mostly taking place in Sarah's book, 'Swimming Pool', with parts of the book being based on Sarah's real experience and parts being completely fictional. I'm all for subjective interpretations, but when the writer/director goes so far out of his way to show that Julie is a fictional person, I feel that this should at least be acknowledged as the creative intent behind the work.
I have to say that seeing Julie as a work of Sarah's mind also makes the story very interesting. It's a glimpse into her own psychology, and a bit tragic that this person, Julie, never existed. The entire movie is sort of an exploration of dreams, creativity, and reality. The extensive use of mirrors and reflections in a way makes this story ABOUT mirrors, reflections, and a creator's own self within the work.
Furthermore, though Ozon hasn't really sat down and explained 'This is what happened in the film', he did, thankfully, give this quote:
"In terms of directing, I've treated everything that is imaginary in Swimming Pool in a realistic way so that you see it all - fantasy and reality alike - on the same plane. When you tell a story, or when you film it, your process of identification with your characters is such that you completely immerse yourself in their logic and their perceptions. It's as if you're experiencing the same emotions that they are."
http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/filmmaking.asp?ID=23
It should be said, though, that Ozon did not, actually, think of the events seen in the movie 'Swimming Pool' to be the film-version of the happenings in Sarah's book 'Swimming Pool'. Or... at the very least there's some duality there. I think in a way we are seeing the film version of Sarah's book, but also Ozon puts up Sarah's book to be this insanely beautiful and tragic work. I still think of the events of the film as being, essentially, 'Sarah's Book', but also I think of the book she writes, in the story, as some sort of lofty thing. From another interview:
"You asked Ruth Rendell to help with the project...
I asked her if she'd be interested in writing the book that Sarah Morton is supposedly working on in the film. I didn't want her to novelise the script, just to freely imagine what story Sarah Morton might have been writing. But I think she didn't really understand. She sent me a very cold letter saying she didn't need any help with her imagination and she never works with anyone else. She was very cold, like Sarah Morton. But I would love her to see the film."
I guess, in the end, it would be best to look at the events in the story to be the events Sarah's writing.. but in the end not the book she publishes (the final book being inspired by 'sarah's mother')
Furthermore you'll notice that John, her publisher, never mentions the existence of this daughter 'Julie', and that his actual daughter, Julia, is sort of an innocent version of Julie.
Yes. That phone call, if left in, would have simply made the narrative a confusing mess.
shareBingo, that's exactly what I thought too.
I think ever since Taxi Driver to modern day (Inception), people have the habit of overanalyzing literature. Like that South Park episode Tale of Scrotie McBoogerBalls/
I can't believe how many people didn't get that the whole Julie thing was made up and was in fact the content of the book. It was obvious.
share
Heh, claiming a theory to be obvious to make yourself feel smarter, in actuality it only makes you think less about the subject. Doing this sometimes is probably fine (though smart people almost never do this), doing this all the time is very toxic to your intelligence.
Heh, claiming a theory to be obvious to make yourself feel smarter, in actuality it only makes you think less about the subject. Doing this sometimes is probably fine (though smart people almost never do this), doing this all the time is very toxic to your intelligence.Did the chair fall over as you stood up and punched the air after writing that?
_______________________________( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
There isn't suppose to be an absolute truth about the mother or Julie. It is meant to be open for own interpretation whether you like it or not.
shareDisagree. John's daughter is just an inspiration. Julie is an imaginary character invented by Sarah. Nor does Sarah from any mental disorder. It's an imagination, not a delusion.
I don't intend to be offensive, but I have to defend my opinions.
Julie also could be a con artist (that makes more sense to me than the step-sister idea). Or she could be a fantasy as others have said. There is clearly more than one possible way to interpret this because the end is highly AMBIGUOUS. I think Ozon intentionally left this very open-ended.
shareI'll chime in- there was no other person ever at the house- this was simply the story she came up with while she was camped out there. How else could she present the book to the dad if there was any truth in any of it, including the wife's rejected novel?
In fact, as things started getting really weird with the murder and all, I started suspecting that Julia wasn't even real.
This is not one of those movies (like Pan's Labyrinth) that is purposely open to interpretation at the end.
The title of this thread is correct- Everyone is way over-thinking this movie!
Although I agree with everything you say about Swimming Pool, Pan's is not left open for interpretation. It is made clear (and even confirmed by Del Toro) that the "fantasy" part is in fact also real.
sharethe way I recalled Pan's is that only the little girl ever saw (or was affected by) the fantastical elements of the film- wouldn't that be leaving it open for the viewer?
where could I find Del Toro's comments on that?
thanks in advance for any info
Been fun reading all of these comments over the years. The problem with all of the fantasy theories, is that if any of you would have taken the time to play the bonus features on the DVD, you would discover that Julie was real, John and Sarah eventually do speak to each other about her being there. He does apologize to Sarah for not telling her that his daughter shows up every now and then, and they even have a conversation about the book taking a different direction. John asks Sarah "The new story has nothing to do with my daughter being there...right"? She hesitates, and answers "no of course not".
So, the OP is right on the money in this thread. The director cut out just enough of the telling scenes to have the audience do exactly what you guys are doing: 'trying to take an obvious story, and make it mysterious'.
He probably shot the last scene as an afterthought or alternate ending as well, deciding at the last editing moment, if he would use it or not. I'm glad he did. Look at all the fun you guys have had second guessing the facts over the years.
Or, the ending was simply designed as a daydream of Sarah's, fantasizing being back on her deck, waving at Julie, and then substituting the other "younger" daughter she caught a glimpse of in the publishing office, being in Julie's place, as a way of expressing how different things would have been to the book, the trip, and Sarah's memories if "she" was the daughter that showed up instead of Julie. Very nicely done by the director I might add.
None of this makes me like the movie any less. I still love it, and all the crazy characters in it as well. Of course it doesn't hurt the movie that it was shot in the south of France either. One of the most beautiful places on the planet.
The problem with all of the fantasy theories, is that if any of you would have taken the time to play the bonus features on the DVD, you would discover that Julie was real, John and Sarah eventually do speak to each other about her being there. He does apologize to Sarah for not telling her that his daughter shows up every now and then, and they even have a conversation about the book taking a different direction. John asks Sarah "The new story has nothing to do with my daughter being there...right"? She hesitates, and answers "no of course not".
What I will consider is this: The Director "shot" all the footage with the little details. It wasn't "an earlier draft".
The director and producers watched the first cut and thought they had a cute little film about a psychotic writer that would actually help a murderer (who was gorgeous, mostly naked, and psychotic enough herself, to actually kill her lover boy to make the writer's book more interesting) hide the evidence of her crime, for exactly the same reason.
The "cute little movie" wasn't enough to satisfy this creative director, so he eliminated some facts to make the flick have alternative scenarios to make it more mysterious.
It worked quite well. I've been reading a zillion alternatives to the actual facts for years about this movie. I love it.
Does it mean that Julie isn't real? Absolutely not.
In fact my favorite scene is the last one, where Sarah imagines how different things would have been if it was the other "sane" daughter that showed up instead of the wacko Julie.
Love the movie, and the way anyone wants to interpret it, is also fine with me.
I'm sure it's fine with the director as well.
The Writer/Director *has* explicitly stated that parts of the film are taken from Sarah's imagination.
I think your view of the film is problematic because you're judging a film that doesn't exist. I.e. you're imagining a film where a deleted scene was never deleted, and extrapolating an interpretation based on that film, rather than the film that was actually released.
Well, Doctor Freud, I am simply revealing the mindset of the Director that conceived and shot the film. If that is problematic, I suggest re-shooting it yourself, then you can make the film the fantasy that you'd like it to be. Right now, "it is what it is". I love bonus features on DVDs.
shareWell, Doctor Freud, I am simply revealing the mindset of the Director that conceived and shot the film. If that is problematic, I suggest re-shooting it yourself, then you can make the film the fantasy that you'd like it to be. Right now, "it is what it is". I love bonus features on DVDs.
share