FILM FESTIVAL-VENICE/A BIGGER SPLASH Fiennes dances, Swinton whispers in Venice "A Bigger Splash"

Record ID: 141460

  • Title: FILM FESTIVAL-VENICE/A BIGGER SPLASH Fiennes dances, Swinton whispers in Venice "A Bigger Splash"
  • Date: 6th September 2015
  • Summary: VENICE, ITALY (SEPTEMBER 6, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ACTOR RALPH FIENNES SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS AS HE ARRIVES FOR NEWS CONFERENCE FANS AND MEDIA TALKING PHOTOS ACTRESS TILDA SWINTON ARRIVING FOR NEWS CONFERENCE AND WALKING UP TO FANS SWINTON SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTRESS TILDA SWINTON SAYING: "I'm here with my friends so it's great." SWINTON SIGNING AUTOGR
  • Embargoed: 21st September 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA4RT9VFM7CVR551DKLD072VNRD
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The usually decorous Ralph Fiennes dances wildly around a swimming pool to a Rolling Stones tune while Tilda Swinton mostly whispers in the offbeat French-Italian film "A Bigger Splash" which screened at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday (September 6).
    Italian director Luca Guadagnino's remake of the 1969 French film "La Piscine" (The Swimming Pool) about a vicious love triangle set on the Cote d'Azur, transfers the action to the Italian Mediterranean island of Pantelleria.
    The setting is a cue for Fiennes's character Harry, a record producer, to unleash his inner satyr.
    He flies unannounced into Pantelleria with his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson) and barges in on his rock-star ex-girlfriend Marianne (Swinton) and her filmmaker lover Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts).
    The four stars joined Guadagnino at a Venice news conference ahead of the film's world premiere at the film festival.
    "I'm here with my friends so it's great," Swinton told reporters as she arrived for the news conference and took a moment to sign autographs and pose for photos with fans.
    "It's full of my friends so it's home from home," she added.
    The wave of migrants and refugees landing in Europe or dying in the attempt has not hit the Lido where the 72nd edition of the Venice Film Festival is underway, but it is coming up in the films being shown and in the discussions about them.
    "A Bigger Splash" has a subplot involving people who have come ashore on Pantelleria.
    Addressing reporters at the news conference, Swinton objected to the use of the word 'migrants' to describe the stream of humanity seeking refuge in Europe.
    "Can I just suggest by the way that we all get out of the habit of calling anybody migrants in this situation? We're dealing with refugees, war refugees," Swinton said, responding to a question posed by Reuters which referred to the people portrayed in the film as migrants, getting applause from the room.
    The film incorporates flashes of information from television broadcasts about refugees and immigrants landing on Lampedusa.
    It also shows a group of refugees hiding out in the hills of Pantelleria and more who have been caged into a fenced-in area beside the local police station.
    "They're human beings, theoretically," one of the characters comments dismissively.
    Guadagnino said he had moved the setting to the island, and introduced the theme of immigration, in order to create a sharp contrast with his self-absorbed main characters.
    "The idea of four people in a house dealing with each other is potentially inept unless the absorbed force of their own desires is questioned by the clash with reality and by another opposite force that brings them to the point in which they must understand who they really are. So I do believe, as I said before, Pantelleria as a sort of confine (border in Italian) border place is really demanding to be understood by these characters and is asking them to pose themselves these ethical questions," he said.
    Swinton, who was directed by Guadagnino in "I Am Love" (2009), said at first the timing was not right for her to do "A Bigger Splash".
    When it became possible she suggested her part should be a mostly non-speaking role -- which is why her character Marianne is convalescing from a throat operation.
    "It was a moment in my life when I really didn't want to say anything. Even less than I do now. But I sort of figured out, against wanting to be with Luca in pretty much any circumstances, wanting to go to Pantelleria, wanting to play with these extraordinary performers and wanting to be with my colleagues Yorick Le Saux, great cinematographer and work with Walter Fasano, great editor, again, a sort of family to me, how would it be possible for me to take part in this scenario and the one thing that came to mind was 'well, I will come if I don't need to speak'. And the more I thought about it as just being about me and my life I started to think that this could be a contribution to this huis cleos of these characters who are all, it seems to me, fighting the fact that none of us can really communicate with one another with words or with nothing else, it's a really tricky business communicating between human beings," she said.
    Cast as a motormouth, know-it-all extrovert, Fiennes is called upon to do a scene where he dances around a pool -- solo and without speaking a word.
    "Well, I received this fantastic screenplay from David and from Luca with this great character Harry Hawkes and about 20 minutes into the film it's written that he gets up and dances and expresses himself completely through dancing. I'd never been asked to do that in a film before so I said yes, thank you," said Fiennes, who demonstrated his dancing skills at the film's Venice photocall.
    "I had lot's of...in my freetime I would go to the house and I would have the song in my iPod and I would just dance, it was fantastic just to dance," he added.
    The film is among 21 competing for the Golden Lion prize to be awarded on Saturday (September 12).
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