François Ozon has my nombre.

Last week I wrote a column extolling the lascivious virtues of Ludivine Sagnier, co-star of the French director's latest genre implosion. Swimming Pool is a feast for Ludivine oglers, to be sure--and I'm not alone; the opening-day matinee screening at the Harvard Exit was peppered with voyeurs and viewers alike. Despite what the poster would have you believe, the film is far more than a Charlie's Angels-style leer-a-thon; as fans of Ozon's prior works (8 Women, Under the Sand, Water Drops on Burning Rocks) might expect, it's more like an inversion of movie lust than an indulgence. But on its way to deconstruction, Swimming Pool indulges quite a bit, deriving much of its unsettling energy from the near-constant presence of Sagnier's aggressively statuesque form.

Ozon's trick is to turn the ogle factor on its ear by fully embracing it. In his hands, Sagnier's nimble sexuality becomes a weapon aimed at the heart of--or rather, forged in the fires of--the main character's troubled psyche. Charlotte Rampling plays Sarah Morton, a stuffy British author of best-selling murder mysteries (à la P. D. James) who is stuck between novels. Her publisher, John (the stately Charles Dance), offers his French chteau as a retreat where she can map out her next work. In his office, Rampling plays the petulant artist, demanding fatherly attention and extracting a promise that he will come and visit her while she's away.

Shortly after Sarah arrives in the beautiful house, however, she is greeted by a different visitor: John's illegitimate French daughter, Julie (Sagnier), who shows up unannounced in the middle of the night and promptly sets up shop as the film's antagonist. Though repulsed by Julie's trashy appearance and behavior, Sarah is nonetheless fascinated by the girl's existence and the clues it offers into John's secret life--and her own. Because this is a Hitchcockian suspense film, it's not long before a dead body turns up, but because it's an Ozon picture, the real plot lies deeper.

It's not so much that Sagnier spends most of her screen time either naked or mostly naked, nor that her character is ravenously promiscuous, but that she symbolizes a very specific fantasy of the adolescent French girl--coarse, flagrantly sexy, and constantly in search of a surrogate father. For Sarah, a woman of late middle age who still exhibits compulsive behavior of her own (she's the kind of person who buys a gallon of nonfat yogurt then wolfs the whole thing; she's also a novelist), Julie is both a foil and a double whose presence represents a double-edged opportunity: unlocking details that will help Sarah dream up a new book, but also unleashing the fears that attend the twilight of her years as a sexual being. By the end of Swimming Pool, subtext has become text, and viewers (and voyeurs) are left wondering just whose fantasies have been laid bare.