Venice Review: Luca Guadagnino's 'A Bigger Splash' With Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes & Dakota Johnson

Progressing like a holiday suntan from initial golden glamor through a potentially infected burn and finally to a flaky peel, Luca Guadagnino's "A Bigger Splash" is an enjoyable slice of sunshine noir, with the emphasis on the sunshine. A reworking of the 1969 Jacques Deray title "La Piscine," it owes most of its plot to that film, but other elements come from Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock and still others again from that well-worn European tradition dedicated to exploring the conflicting currents of sexual desire among small groups of louche sophisticates lounging around in fabulous clothes, accessorized with a scowl. But what's most refreshing about "I Am Love" director Guadagnino's approach here is that there's none of the sludgy ennui that normally characterizes those rather self-involved dramas: "A Bigger Splash" is less refined and a lot messier, but that also makes it livelier, more eccentric. And if it has introspective depths...