For a movie starring red carpet actors such as Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes, A Bigger Splash was distinctly a European affair- that is, until Fox Searchlight successfully acquired the U.S. rights to it. Now the Italian-based production has
its footing in America as well, and is said to be released in U.S. theaters this year.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love), A Bigger Splash is a remake of Jacques Deray’s 1969 crime drama La Piscine, which revolved around a passionate love triangle. The 2015 movie remains a crime thriller, examining the relationship between American couple, Paul (Matthias Shoenaerts) and Marianne (Tilda Swinton) as they vacation in Italy, as well as the heightened tensions between them once Marianne’s former lover Harry (Ralph Fiennes) and his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson) step into the picture.
Paul finds himself attracted to the young daughter, while buried feelings of lust bubble to the surface between Marianne and Harry. The punchline of the plot tag concludes that this tangled web “leads to jealousy and dangerous sexual scenarios.” IMDb seems to validate this phrase; its list of the 25 top movies featuring female nudity in 2015, puts A Bigger Splash at #3. Considering La Piscine does not shy away from demonstrating the sexual content, Guadagnino most likely follows suit in his remake.
This is nothing new for up-and-coming actress Dakota Johnson, who recently made a splash with her portrayal of Anastasia Steele in the pseudo-erotic Fifty Shades of Grey. Swinton, a long-time colleague and collaborator with Guadagnino, is another actress familiar with bearing skin on screen, having performed a handful of nude scenes in I Am Love, as well as various intimate scenes from her earlier films such as Young Adam and Orlando. When questioned about her “fearlessness” in exposing her body on screen Swinton responds:
I’m always very tentative about this concept of fearlessness. I don’t know if it would be possible to do scenes like that with people who weren’t very close friends…we all knew that we wanted to show was something really, very precise and real and natural…
StudioCanal, the French-based film producer and distributor, already has A Bigger Splash set for release in the UK, Europe, Australlia, and New Zealand. In a statement, Guadagnino expressed his excitement over the U.S. release, saying how he is “honored that Fox Searchlight has chosen to distribute A Bigger Splash in the states”.
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