ANOTHER AMAZING REVIEW FOR "THE POOL"

Chris Smith's THE POOL opened in Ottawa (at the Bytowne Cinema) this past weekend and received further glowing reviews seen below.

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The Pool
From Goa with love
Cormac Rea


Director Chris Smith's The Pool makes a splash at Sundance

Every now and then a film comes along that combines the simplicity of a well told story - nuanced symbolism, dynamic relationships, and "real" characters creating believable, familiar tension - with the vibrancy of cinematic perspective, evocative setting, and handpicked cast; The Pool, 2007 Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, is such a deceptively grand production.
Directed by the highly accomplished American, Chris Smith (creator of American Movie, The Yes Men, among others), The Pool takes place in Goa, India - more commonly the province of hedonism for the globe's Trance music brigade - focusing on a local native, Venkatesh, who works as a "room boy," cleaning at a local hotel.

Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan) spends his afternoons high in a mango tree, spying on A Secret Garden - esque paradise, complete with a tempting, azure-tinted swimming pool. His curiosity of the outside world is tempered somewhat by his lot in life; being poor and of a low caste in India, the teenage Venkatesh can find little opportunity for advancement or success - his possibilities appear dismally proscribed. Yet, when he is not working in the hotel or helping his best friend Jhangir (Jhangir Badshah), Venkatesh peers over the garden wall again and again, learning of the external through his witness of the complicated lives of its wealthy owners.

Although the plot initially untangles at a meandering rate, gathering steam about a third into the film, Smith's The Pool

is always enjoyable for its carefully measured portrayal of real Goa life. Like Venkatesh, our only glimpse of drug addled ravers is on a single bus-ride, a purposefully contrived scene which is telling in its understatement.

Off the cuff, Jhangir relates a local rumour about suspicious foreign men hanging about with young Indian boys. Venkatesh is skeptical, offering the opinion that many older Indian men also suffer from the same sexual proclivities. Of course, an audience of middle class western people will already have a set of preformed opinions about Venkatesh's Goa, its inhabitants and tourists, through the omnipresent moral eye presented by global media sources. The Pool offers an ironic interpretation of Goa from the proverbial other, the insider: the native son.

Aside from the beautifully developed characters, buoyant plotline and powerful conclusion, The Pool's greatest asset is its employ of subtle sociological commentary, both of western and eastern civilizations. A lingering, naturalistic tale, The Pool's symbols will be enduringly seared in to your frontal lobe long after the final credits roll.

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The Pool is deep
Lovely, languid tale of a poor Indian boy's friendship with a wealthy Indian girl and her family

By LIZ BRAUN, SUN MEDIA
http://www.ottawasun.com/Showbiz/Movies/2009/04/09/9065046.html

The Pool is a rags-to-riches tale of a young man who becomes obsessed with a swimming pool attached to an extravagant country house.

In Goa, a young man becomes obsessed with the swimming pool attached to a big country house. It's a symbol of wealth that he regards with longing.

He decides that the day will come when he'll swim freely in that water; how he gets there and how he changes along the way are at the centre of The Pool, a quiet, naturalistic drama about the unexpected ways in which people connect with one another.

Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan) is a 'room boy' of 18 who works at a hotel in Panjim, Goa. His work is scrubbing floors and toilets, and he makes a bit more money selling plastic bags to shoppers at the market. He has a mother who lives far away, and he has a best friend in Jhangir, a 12-year-old orphan. Venkatesh wants to find a way to get the money to go to school, but in the meantime, he and Jhangir like to sit up in a tree and spy on the house and swimming pool of a rich family. Neither boy can figure out how it's possible that someone could be rich enough to have a house he or she would leave empty.

One day, there are people around the pool. After seeing them a few times, Venkatesh finds a way to do a bit of garden work for the house owner. He also encounters the man's rebellious teenage daughter (Ayesha Mohan); in some of the most delightful scenes in the movie, Venkatesh and Jhangir ignore the huge social gap between themselves and this young woman, and simply bombard her with friendship.

The two boys tell her stories about their lives, they buy her lunch, they take her walking to an abandoned fort.

Slowly but surely, the rich man who owns the house (Nana Patekar) develops a paternal affection for Venkatesh. He wants to help Venkatesh better his life, and asks him to move to Bombay -- where he could both work and go to school. With his dreams about to come true, Venkatesh has to consider whether or not he can go that far away from his mother and from Jhangir.

Given its Indian setting and its rags-to-riches (sort of) theme, The Pool has been compared to Slumdog Millionaire, but other than being likewise transporting, it is a completely different film experience. The Pool is a slow, seemingly uncomplicated story that sneaks up on you and stays with you long after you've left the theatre.

Both Venkatesh Chavan and Jhangir Badshah are first- time actors, and both live and work in Panjim, where the movie is set. Nana Patekar, who plays the owner of the pool and Vinkatesh's mentor, is a legend in Indian cinema, and Ayesha Mohan has been involved in several other films. All the performances are extraordinary; by the end of the movie, you believe you know these characters well.

The Pool is beautiful to look at, and, for what it conveys about human nature, to experience. The movie is in Hindi with English subtitles.

LIZ.BRAUN@SUNMEDIA.CA
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THE POOL

1 HOUR, 38 MINUTES

STARRING: VENKATESH CHAVAN, NANA PATEKAR, JHANGIR BHADSHAH

DIRECTOR: CHRIS SMITH

Sun Rating: 4 out of 5