Ralph Fiennes makes waves
In ‘ Bigger Splash,’ the actor is an impudent life force amid a star- studded cast.
No less than his ravishing 2009 melodrama “I Am Love,” Luca Guadagnino’s “A Bigger Splash” is a swooning cinematic appeal to the senses — two hours of al fresco lovemaking, gorgeous scenery and simmering erotic warfare. Which is not to suggest that the f ilm shortcircuits rational thought; on the contrary, its teasing, sun- drenched surfaces are likely to prompt a series of questions. When was the last time you sampled a freshly made ricotta? What’s the going rate for a villa rental in Pantelleria? When exactly
did Ralph Fiennes become one of our greatest working actors?
Those inclined to measure a movie star’s worth in Oscar nominations might point to Fiennes’ mid-’ 90s breakthrough with “Schindler’s List” and “The English Patient.” But if a truer measure of an actor’s greatness is the ability to surprise over the long haul, I’d set the date about a decade later, when he quietly walked away with the Keira Knightley vehicle “The Duchess,” and well into his galvanizing f ive- f ilm run as Lord Voldemort. By the time he stepped into “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” brilliantly skewering — and deepening — his own costume- drama repertoire, it was clear that he was just beginning to explore the full measure of his protean gift.
That gift is on glorious, supremely uninhibited display in “A Bigger Splash,” a moody Mediterranean- noir cocktail that would be worth imbibing if for no other reason than to witness Fiennes’ display of pure, untram- meled id. Whether strutting about in the nude with a magnificent lack of embarrassment, seducing a crowd with a karaoke cover of Deep Fish’s “Direction NYC” or cheerfully antagonizing everyone in sight, he is an impudent, insistent life force in a movie that meticulously charts a course for death.
Availing himself of a starry cast featuring Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson, and sampling a range of cinematic inf luences that includes Michelangelo Antonioni, Claude Chabrol and early Roman Polanski, this Italian auteur has made one messy but satisfying cannonball plunge into the Hollywood deep end.
In a nod to her oft- noted resemblance to David Bowie, Swinton plays a worldfamous rock star, Marianne Lane, who is recuperating on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria after a recent throat operation. She’s under strict orders not to use her voice, which is just fine for her and her documentary- f ilmmaker boyfriend, Paul ( Schoe- naerts), a sensitive hunk who easily matches Marianne’s reticence. Silence is golden and life is bliss, at least until a snake appears in this Eden — f irst literally, and then in the form of an old friend, Harry ( Fiennes).
Overstaying his welcome the moment he arrives, Harry is a record producer and Marianne’s ex- lover; as it turns out, he’s also the guy who introduced her to his friend Paul. The affection that once united the three of them still f lickers in the present, though too weakly to dispel the clouds of lust, jealousy and thinly veiled hostility that begin to gather. Making matters worse and further complicating the sexual geometry, Harry has brought along Penelope ( Johnson), the sultry- sullen young daughter he’s only just met for the f irst time. The fact that people keep mistaking her for his girlfriend delights him no end and is clearly meant to keep us similarly guessing.
The trappings of musical stardom — as seen in brief f lashbacks to Marianne’s concerts and recording sessions, and heard intermittently on the soundtrack — do more than isolate the characters in a cocoon of luxury. As they lounge around poolside or make occasional visits to a nearby village, their every word and gesture seems to ref lect an entire history of drunken nights, sexual conquests, paralyzing addictions and unspoken tragedies, all of which make Marianne and Paul’s contentment seem all the more hard- won.
Harry, operating with a take- no- prisoners abrasiveness that is inseparable from his charm, has every inten- tion of disrupting the lovers’ idyll. When he lip- syncs to the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue” (“Is there nothing I can say, nothing I can do to change your mind?”), his body vibrating with ecstasy, there can be no mistaking what he means. Penelope, whose hobbies include disrobing, diving and oozing a general air of fatale menace, is quieter but no less threatening.
Schoenaerts, no stranger to playing bruised, brooding slabs in f ilms such as “Rust and Bone” and “Bullhead,” makes an equally compelling screen presence here, matching Fiennes’ libidinous excess with his own sexy restraint. And Swinton, even when robbed of one of an actor’s most expressive tools, somehow turns that deprivation to her advantage: Her hoarse, watchful silence sets her apart in more ways than one, and Marianne becomes both an object of desire and a f igure of unexpected compassion.
Swinton was also the radiant center of Guadagnino’s “I Am Love,” in which she played a woman slowly awakening to her deepest longings and shedding the pretenses of her upper- class existence. “A Bigger Splash,” which approaches the pursuit of pleasure from a more jaundiced angle, doesn’t have that earlier film’s delirious formal ecstasy. ( It does, however, reveal a similar distrust for swimming pools.) Guadagnino’s visual construction feels more prosaic this time, in thrall to a busy narrative machinery that occasionally creaks as it pushes its characters towards their respective fates.
The f inal act, though anticlimactic in its tying up of loose ends, also delivers an unexpected shift in perspective. Does “A Bigger Splash” end with a cathartic affirmation of its characters’ happiness, or a cynical indictment of their privilege? Guadagnino isn’t telling. But he’s made the rare movie that, for all its delight in its own beautiful surface, turns out to be altogether less shallow than it appears.