A Bigger Splash

There's this scene in A Bigger Splash—one of the film’s climaxes—that is seared into my mind. Its one of the best shot sequences that Guadagnino has ever committed to film, right up there with the likes of the adrenaline-steeped conclusion of Challengers and the psychedelic dream scene in Queer. Paul has relapsed, Harry has dropped his veneer of nonchalance, and the two have it out in the pool. It’s a scene that’s coated in tension, both in a sense of violence and eroticism. It isn’t a secret that Harry is going to die—it feels like every character in the film is actively aware of the grim fate that awaits Ralph Fiennes’s character, most of all himself (see “We’ll grow old together” , uttered almost knowingly)—and yet there’s this part of you that’s left wondering whether these two men are going to kill or fuck each other. That shot of Harry—newly deceased—with Paul’s arms wrapped around his neck contrasts against similar shots in the film, all of which are drenched in a sexiness that should by all means be devoid in this moment, but which is undeniably present. It’s artistry.