CURRENT VIEWING: THE SWIMMER

This film first piqued my interest when Steven Klein lensed that all-Chad-White edit of L'Uomo Vogue referencing "The Swimmer" as the shoot's inspiration. So last night I settled down to watch the movie, expecting a dated, mannered stilted exercise in 60's filmmaking. Talk about a headspinner! The Swimmer opens with a kind of upper middle class spin on a Slim Aarons fantasy world, but behind the very witty (and brittle) dialogue that opens the film you start to sense the ennui and alcoholism that haunts this wealthy enclave. Soon your mind stops fixating on the beautiful houses and the luscious swimming pools and you start to notice Burt Lancaster is acting his ass off! As he unravels in the course of the film, you realize how brilliantly the screenplay transposes the abstract poetry of Cheever's prose and converts it into haunting imagery. And to keep it vapid, I kept staring at the actress Janet Landgard thinking how very much like a blonde Irina K she seems like. 'The Swimmer" utterly deserves its place in the fashion reference library and makes a great companion piece to "The Ice Storm".