This film surprised me in many ways, right up to the final scene.
Instead of us being led through the process of discovery of how each of the characters perceived each other in this movie in a series of expositions in which the viewer is let into knowledge that onscreen characters are not aware of it, the reverse happens throughout the movie. - onscreen characters continually are more perceptive and empathetic of the other characters in the film without that being spelled out to the viewer, making for a more subtle, immersive, voyeuristic and potentially confusing viewing experience.
Early in the movie we watch a typical high end resort pool-side scene where two couples relaxing on opposite sides of the pool size each other up. On one side is an age matched professional young, but no longer so young to be childless married couple, a writer famous for a small number of books, who was having trouble writing, and was holidaying before taking a salaried job, and his editor wife, who came from money, and who obviously married him when he was producing famous works, On the other side is an an over seventy man with an attractive bikini clad young woman just over 18 acting very familiar and comfortable with each other.
The wife notices the husband noticing, and instead of reacting in a cliched way, offers her straw hat to her husband so that he can spy on the other couple without being noticed.
What follows I think is actually the two men engaging in a sort of virtual battle of lions for breeding access to the females, with everything between both couples up in the air at various points in the film as the interplay between the four people play out about who will end up with whom, as we find in greater and more disturbing detail that both couples seem to have reached something of a crossroads in each of their relationships.
Given the fact all the reviews seemed unsatisfied with this film, I guess my take on it might be quite wrong, because I think I understand the movie, I might simply be mistaken, as I agree that it was not completely clear at all times whether what we were seeing was fantasy created by the writer that was on holiday,
But as the film climaxed, it became pretty clear to me by the end that the violence shown in the film was almost certainly the writer's over-active imagination at work, created by his voyeuristic witnessing of the older man shaving the back of the younger woman's head.as she lay on the hotel bed, combined with clever manipulation of the younger man by the older man.
Hopefully this is not a "spoiler"in the traditional sense, as all the other reviews refer to the violence also, and the other reviewers interpreted this movie differently than I have.
I really think this is one of the best films I've seen: the photography was beautiful, and underlined the drama, isolation and intimacy of all the people involved.
The music was good, but not intrusive, the actors were great, and I got a good a clear sense of the great intensity of the emotions being felt by the protagonists, and sometimes their visualized fears, of all four as their holiday progressed.
While the main focus was on the emotions of the men, the women were equally present as strong characters, despite the title, and each actively made choices throughout that affected the outcome just a much as what the men chose to do.
