jane birkin

Death on the Nile (1978)

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I really, really wanted to love Death on the Nile. I first acquired a copy of it shortly after the death of the late Angela Lansbury, my love for whom is widely advertised all over this site. Unfortunately, her role in this is one of the smaller ones from among the ensemble, and the overall tone and extended length of this one was a bit of a letdown. It’s not bad; I quite enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. 

As the film opens, we meet Jackie de Bellefort (Mia Farrow), who practically begs her heiress friend Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) to hire Jackie’s fiance Simon (Simon MacCorkindale) for a position at Ridgeway’s estate. She relents, and then we jump forward a year to find Simon on a honeymoon with his wife, except he hasn’t married Jackie, and is instead now wedded to Linnet. That doesn’t stop Jackie from being a thorn in their side, however, as she shows up at their most recent romantic rendezvous atop a Giza pyramid to recite facts about its dimensions, with Linnet and Simon both expressing frustration that she has appeared at every destination on their post-wedding trip. (As a side note, I loved this; if my best friend stole my betrothed, I would also be so petty that neither of them would know a moment’s peace for the rest of their lives, and there would be no corner of the earth in which I could not find a way to be a nuisance.) They attempt to give her the slip before the next leg of their trip, and appear to have been successful, as they board a steamboat travelling down, as the title would suggest, the Nile River. 

As it turns out, not only are they not alone on this journey, but many of the passengers, like Jackie, are in the vicinity because of their desire to cause trouble for the newlyweds. There’s Linnet’s maidservant, Louise (Jane Birkin), who was promised a dowry for her service to Linnet so that she could marry a man she loves, but which Linnet continues to delay paying, possibly with the intention of completely reneging on their deal. Miss Bowers (Maggie Smith)’s formerly noble family lost their fortune at the machinations of Linnet’s father, forcing her into taking a thankless job as the companion of Marie Van Schuyler (Bette Davis), whose own aristocratic status does not stop her from having kleptomaniacal inclinations, especially with regards to Linnet’s pearls. Linnet has also publicly denounced the practices of Dr. Bessner (Jack Warden), as her friend died under his “care,” which includes treating patients with intravenous armadillo urine, and his career is in the balance. Then there’s Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy), who manages Linnet’s stateside business and who is set on preventing her from finding out that he’s been skimming, while Colonel Race (David Niven) is there surreptitiously acting on behalf of her English lawyers, who want to bring this to her attention. Nebulously, there is a young communist aboard named James (Jon Finch), who bears hatred for Linnet as a representative of class striation, and, last but not least, the ship is also carrying Salome Otterbourne (Lansbury) and her daughter Rosalie (Olivia Hussey); Salome is a romance novelist currently embroiled in a libel lawsuit over one of her recent books, which was partially based on Linnet’s real life and may have insufficiently differentiated the main character from the inspiration. And, of course, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is there, because someone has to use their little grey cells to figure out who did it when Linnet turns up dead, and the only ironclad alibi is Jackie’s. 

The oddest thing about this adaptation is that it decides to play the story for light comedy; that’s not that strange in and of itself (yours truly was in a Christie parody entitled And Then There Was One in high school—it’s a common way to present her work), but it’s curious how intermittently the comedy works. Where this least was least successful was when the humor went very broad, most notably in regards to Lansbury’s perpetually intoxicated (and horned up) Salome, who is possibly the most obnoxious character in the whole thing. You know that if I’m looking at Lady Angela and having a bad time, then we’re really in trouble. Shortly before a failed attempt on Linnet’s life at the Temple of Karnak, we’re treated to a scene of all of the passengers disembarking the ship and setting out to ride up to the site; I suppose we’re supposed to laugh at the sight gag of George Kennedy struggling to mount a donkey while the others get on camels, but it certainly failed to get a mirthless smile out of me, let alone a chuckle. There’s also an overlong gag when the group first boards the ship and I. S. Johar’s captain character does an extended bit about trying to guess which guest is which, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s possibly racist and at the very least undignified. On the other hand, the biggest laugh I did get was from one of Lansbury’s scenes, in which Salome is recounting how she managed to witness the killer flee from the stateroom, her voiceover explaining that a deckhand was showing her something on the shore, while the flashback itself reveals her buying several large liquor bottles from the man instead. At least I can say that the film got funnier for me as it went along, with more of the jokes landing in the back half than in the front. 

On a purely visual level, the film is much more notable. As a period piece, all of the clothing is gorgeous; the only Academy Award for which it was nominated was Best Costume Design, and it won that Oscar as well as the BAFTA in the same category. Special attention should be drawn to Smith’s outfitting as Miss Bowers. Throughout the film, she’s consistently dressed in tightly tailored men’s tuxedos and other formalwear, and she looks great in every one of them. Her silhouette is stunning, and she works the slightly transgressive look quite well. I was also struck by the various gowns in which Farrow is costumed. When most people think about her, I assume that they all have the same first mental image that I do, which is of her emaciated, shaven-headed prisoner in a nightgown in Rosemary’s Baby. Everything else I’ve ever seen her in was during (or after) her marriage to Woody Allen, during which time she was, to put it lightly, not doing well. I don’t think that I ever realized before that she’s a beautiful woman, and getting to see her slink about in dresses that won costuming awards on both sides of the Atlantic was a thrill. I loved her angry, vengeful energy, and she ended up being one of the movie’s highlights. 

This is somewhat condensed from the 1937 novel on which it was based, as usually must be done when making a Christie adaptation. Characters are removed, motives are swapped around or condensed, and you’re still likely to end up creating something that’s over two hours long, with this particular film clocking in at 134 minutes (Kenneth Branagh’s 2022 version was 127 minutes long, and I can’t imagine how the David Suchet adaptation manages to get the plot resolved in 97 minutes). That’s a decent time for a good mystery, but it errs quite long for a comedy, so it ends up succeeding more as one than the other. It’s not bad, but it almost feels like it would work better broken up into two parts for Masterpiece Theatre. And, frankly, I didn’t enjoy seeing Angela Lansbury take a bullet during these trying times. Embark (or don’t) with that in mind. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Bonus Features: The Swimmer (1968)

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Our current Movie of the Month, 1968’s The Swimmer, stars Burt Lancaster as an aging suburban playboy who, on a whim, decides to “swim home” by visiting a string of friends’ backyard pools across his wealthy East Coast neighborhood.  It’s a boldly vapid premise that New Hollywood button-pusher Frank Perry (along with his then-wife Eleanor Perry, who wrote the majority of his early screenplays) somehow molded into a low-key mindmelter of 1960s moral rot through an eerie, matter-of-fact sense of surrealism.  The Swimmer is more of a quirky character piece than it is concerned with the internal logic of its supernatural plot.  Instead of only traveling by the “continuous” “river” of swimming pools he initially envisions over his morning cocktail, Lancaster spends much of the runtime galloping alongside horses, leisurely walking through forests, and crossing highway traffic barefoot.  He does often emerge from one borrowed swimming pool to the next, though, and along the way we dig deeper into the ugliness of his himbo playboy lifestyle.  He starts the film as a masterful charmer, seducing the world (or at least the world’s wives and mistresses) with an infectious swinging-60s bravado.  By the time he swims his last pool, we recognize him as a miserable piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to kiss the feet of the infinite wonderful women of his past whom we meet along the way.  The overall result is sinisterly ludicrous beefcake melodrama, presented in lurid Technicolor.

I can’t think of a better time to revisit The Swimmer than now.  Not only was its general film-nerd awareness boosted during its brief run on the Criterion Channel earlier this year, but it’s also been so brutally, unrelentingly hot outside that all I want to do is look at, dive into, and drown in swimming pools.  Every day that I have to take the bus or walk home from work in the Carribean hell heat of downtown New Orleans, I imagine how wonderful it would be if I could swim my way across the city in an endless line of swimming pools instead, just like in Perry’s film.  Unfortunately, even Lancaster’s decrepit playboy protagonist couldn’t pull that off without cutting some corners on-foot, so his swimming-home dream remains unachievable.  However, I have been able to swim my way across several other movies in the same milieu as The Swimmer: intense psychological dramas centered around summertime sex, booze and, of course, swimming pools.  So, here are a few more titles in that subgenre to check out in addition to our Movie of the Month.

La Piscine (The Swimming Pool, 1969)

There’s no telling how the over-the-hill playboy Ned sees himself in The Swimmer, but it might look a little like 1960s Alain Delon.  Delon was in his prime when he filmed his own poolside psych drama La Piscine, but his outer beauty does little to conceal the inner ugliness he shares with Lancaster in The Swimmer.  The film opens with Delon lounging half-naked poolside, barely lifting his head to sip his cocktail, then initiating sex with his girlfriend the second she’s within butt-swatting reach.  The couple are enjoying a horny, lazy vacation in South France before the reverie is interrupted the arrival of her ex-boyfriend and his teenage daughter, played by a young Jane Birkin.  Tensions quickly rise as it’s immediately apparent that everyone in the makeshift foursome is attracted to exactly the wrong person, threatening to escalate the volatile group dynamic with physical violence if anyone acts on their obvious, mutual desire.

La Piscine is not especially exciting as a psychological crime thriller, but it still excels as deliriously overheated summertime hedonism.  It feels like the entire cast is always seconds away from either a poolside orgy or an afternoon nap, and they’re all too miserable to enjoy either option.  It’s a real shame for all involved that the tension is released through violence instead of orgasm.  Before that act of violence (which takes place in the titular pool, of course), they lounge around a true summertime Eden, soaking up the oversaturated Eastman Color sunshine of a gorgeous, chic European locale.  There have been plenty of erotic dramas & thrillers over the years that have taken direct influence from La Piscine, but the director I found myself thinking of most was Luca Guadagnino, who borrowed its summertime color palette for Call Me By Your Name and its plot for A Bigger Splash (another classic in Swimming Pool Cinema).

Swimming Pool (2003)

Luca Guadagnino is not the only European hedonist to have floated a soft remake of La Piscine.  François Ozon’s 2003 erotic thriller Swimming Pool is so directly influenced by La Piscine that it barely bothered to change the title.  Charlotte Rampling stars as an uptight pulp mystery writer in need of inspiration, vacationing at another Southern French villa with its own backyard swimming pool.  Once there, she becomes obsessed with the sex life of a local twentysomething who has frequent, loud fuck sessions just one bedroom wall away.  The two mismatched women quickly develop a catty, petty roommate rivalry that, again, escalates to a shocking act of violence involving the swimming pool just outside their bedroom windows.  Swimming Pool works really well as a poolside erotic thriller (telegraphing some of the best aspects of Ozon’s Double Lover), but it works even better as a repressed-Brits-vs-the-liberated-French cultural differences comedy, as Rampling struggles to adjust to the local hedonism.

The differences between the two women’s personalities are plainly delineated by how they interact with the titular swimming pool.  While the younger roomie is content to swim in the pool without any leaf-skimming or PH maintenance, Rampling coldly declares “I absolutely loathe swimming pools” as a way to imply only a filthy beast would swim in that Petri dish.  It’s the difference between someone who truly lives and someone who only writes about people who live, a difference that Ozon sketches out with a sly smirk by the final reveal.  He also has a lot of fun playing with the wavy mirror surface of the pool water, reflecting and abstracting Rampling’s obsessive gaze as she ogles the half-naked youth swimming & fucking just outside her own bedroom. 

Deep End (1970)

If all of these suburban & provincial swim sites make the other swimming pool dramas on this list a little difficult to relate to as an urbanite in need of cooling off, dive into Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End instead.  Set in downtown Swinging 60s London, Deep End follows the mouthbreather exploits of a horny teenager who falls for his older coworker in an urban bathhouse, to both of their perils.  The story gradually establishes a hierarchy of low-level sex work from bathhouse-attendant tips to porno theater cruising sites to strip clubs and actual, true-blue brothels, but the bathhouse’s swimming pool is ultimately its main source of leisure and its main site of violence, as is customary to the genre.  As the teen’s older, street-wiser coworker, Jane Asher might be the most inspired “Risk it all for her” casting in the history of the practice; she could easily make a chump out of anyone.  Still, it’s incredibly bleak watching the ways the poorly socialized lout conspires to sexually corner her so that he can lose his virginity with his boyhood crush.  It probably says something that when he does finally corner her in the deep end of the central pool, it’s been entirely drained of water.  It’s eerily empty.

All four of these movies involve sex between adults and nearby youth.  All involve heavy drinking and physical violence, usually poolside.  No wonder this year’s January horror novelty Night Swim found so much to be scared of just beneath the surface of its backyard suburban swimming hole.  Pools are not just an excuse to get half-naked & cool off in a semi-social setting.  They’re also deadly, with just as much threat of drowning as threat of spontaneous sex & merriment.

-Brandon Ledet

Kung-Fu Master! (1988)

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As I’m writing this review of a movie that’s nearly as old as I am, there are currently two prestigey Awards Season dramas from well-respected auteurs in theaters that dabble in age-gap “romances” between adults & teenagers.  In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, a 25-year-old-woman disastrously indulges a semi-romantic friendship with a 15-year-old boy.  In Sean Baker’s Red Rocket, a 40-something conman actively grooms a small-town high schooler for potential employment in the pornography industry.  Surprisingly, it’s the former film that’s taking a lot of online heat for its supposedly dangerous amorality, while the latter is enjoying a quiet, uneventful theatrical run.  Maybe the difference is that Licorice Pizza‘s friendly quasi-romance is played with a nostalgic sentimentality, while Red Rocket more aggressively interrogates the moral shortcomings of its skeezy conman protagonist.  Maybe it’s merely a symptom of Licorice Pizza reaching a wider audience, so more people are around to be offended by it.  I’m going to make no attempts to pinpoint the discrepancy, as I’ve been constantly baffled by what movies have been singled out by the sharpened knives of Age Gap Discourse™ in recent years.  Ever since Call Me By Your Name was treated like a Cuties-level provocation, I’ve struggled to figure out why we’ve completely lost our ability for nuanced discussion of morally ambiguous relationships, especially in discussion of fictional age-gap romances.  One thing I do know, though, is that if it were released in this current hyperbolic environment, Agnes Varda’s Kung-Fu Master! would make these morally righteous kids’ heads explode.

Agnès Varda’s cinematic persona has been over-simplified into a kind of wholesome meme in recent years, but she made provocative, fiercely political art in her time.  Even so, Kung-Fu Master! is one of the toughest watches I’ve seen from her, although it appears to have been made as a tossed-off afterthought mid-production on her documentary Jane B.  Made as a collaboration with that documentary’s titular subject—actor & singer Jane Birkin—Kung-Fu Master! is a sentimental romance drama about a middle-aged woman who inexplicably falls in love with a teenage boy.  The small cast includes Varda & Birkin’s own children, including Varda’s son Matthieu Demy as the snotty object of Birkin’s desire and Birkin’s daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg as his classmate & her romantic rival.  It doesn’t sexualize the scrawny, boyish Demy in any way – outside maybe lingering on a few closed-mouth kisses with the adult Birkin.  Still, it also doesn’t make any excuses for his adult fling’s transgressions.  She is attracted to him specifically because he is underage, visibly fascinated by his juvenile ramblings about boyish nonsense like Dungeons & Dragons and the titular arcade game Kung-Fu Master!.  Falling in love with him ruins her social life, isolating her from her own children & other adults.  The movie doesn’t make any grand gestures to demonize her for her bizarre infatuation, though.  It instead delicately interrogates the absurdism of an adult being so transfixed with a child she has nothing in common with.  It’s a premise that would not survive a minute of modern Age Gap Discourse, at least not in the morally ambiguous way it’s handled here.

Personally, I think Kung-Fu Master! more than justifies exploring this specific moral transgression.  It’s a movie that’s more about the why of its morally squicky events than it is about depicting the what; the most we ever see of Birkin & Demy consummating their onscreen fling are a few chaste little kisses and an implied sleeping bag sleepover.  Meanwhile, the film is anchored to a grim contemporary context that’s presented with much harsher tonal severity.  Kung-Fu Master! is not so much about its romance itself as it is about escaping from the grim circumstances of the AIDS epidemic by retreating into the innocence of schoolyard crushes.  Divorced & painfully lonely, Birkin’s fantasy-prone protagonist longs for the flattery & safety of flirting with a teen boy instead of a sexually mature adult.  She swoons for the smallest, scrawniest boy in her daughter’s class of brutes specifically because he is “curious & vulnerable”.  Meanwhile, the video game arcades she trails him to are crowded by AIDS pamphlets & condom dispensers, constantly reminding her of the much more dangerous, complicated logistics of adult romance.  It isn’t until the mismatched couple isolate themselves for an island vacation that they escape the havoc AIDS has wreaked on big-city living, and they enjoy a moment of interpersonal peace.  It would be very easy to dismiss this film outright for the hands-off way it approaches the immoral romantic pairing at its core, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for being too squicked out by that predatory dynamic to appreciate its larger themes.  I found it to be a tough but moving watch in more ways than I expected, though, especially the further it digs into the reasons for Birkin’s immoral predation.

Curiously, Kung-Fu Master! opens with a scene that’s perfectly tailored for today’s social media climate.  The teenage Demy, dressed in a karate uniform, mimics the stilted video-game motions of his favorite arcade game by treating his city sidewalk as a sight-scrolling button-masher.  It’s a visual gag that’s been repeated endlessly in TikToks & Vines, where teens will mimic the nonsensical body language of GTA maniacs or idle NPCs.  I don’t know that modern social media discourse would have much breathing room for discussing anything that happens after that adorable intro, though, since Varda is entirely disinterested in damning her wayward protagonist for her crimes.  I understand the inherent sensitivity of a film tackling statutory rape in its core narrative, but I still think there’s something lost when art is reductively discussed as real-life morality parables rather than a safe, fictional space to explore complicated ideas.  Despite the obvious personal connection to Varda & Birkin’s own families (including the eventual loss of Varda’s husband & Demy’s father to AIDS complications), these are fictional characters whose onscreen behavior are not being endorsed by their real-life creators.  However, the harsh circumstances of the world they occupy is very real, and their moral transgressions within it are a troubling psychological response to that circumstance.  It’s deeply fucked up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth grappling with.

-Brandon Ledet