Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) is a famous rock star. She is saving her voice while vacationing peacefully with filmmaker boyfriend Paul De Smedt (Matthias Schoenaerts) on a remote Italian island. They are surprised by the arrival of their annoying faded music-producer friend Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes) and his recently discovered daughter Penelope Lannier (Dakota Johnson). Harry surprises them again by inviting over Sylvie and Mireille.

Swinton and Fiennes are a couple top level actors. He is aggressively petty, jealous, and annoying. He is a great force of destruction. It would be nice to have a better exposition of the characters' relationships early on. It keeps one from truly investing in these characters. Marianne has a forced silence while Paul is a passive character. The movie reaches a pinnacle as the foursome is joined by Sylvie and Mireille. I was hoping for a manufactured isolation of those six characters in a spiraling sexual thriller. Instead, it goes in a sudsy soap direction. The actors are able to maintain interest but the meandering plot fails to be compelling.

This has nothing to do with the movie Splash. Though it would have been a great title for a sequel to that movie. But while I had no clue what I was going to watch (blind pick sort of),most of you probably even watched a trailer, so I don't have to write too much about the story itself for you.

I will write this though: the performances are really great. There are a lot of suggestive things in this, some with almost no warning at all, just thrown at you. But it always works. Way better than the chemistry between the characters having to endure time with each other. Not everyone being as honest as they could be ... and all played against that environment, that could not be more open if it tried (Italians and all that). The ending is predictable, but it's more about the way and journey rather than where you end up ...

This is the second Luca Guadagnino film I've watched, the first being Call Me By Your Name. I've come to the conclusion that Guadagnino is highly pretentious. Watching both of these films I get the impression that when he was making them his thought process was "I'm going to make a cerebral, artsy movie" rather than letting greatness come naturally. I'm a fan of Tilda Swinton, but her performance here was awful. I understand the circumstances before she took on the role, but if she didn't feel up to it, she shouldn't have taken it. Matthias Schoenaerts and Ralph Fiennes are the stars of the movie, and both of their performances are exceptional, especially the former's. Dakota Johnson was just being Dakota Johnson the whole time.

The film had a lot of potential, but it never quite fulfilled that potential. Reading about all the changes that were made to the story make me think that if those changes hadn't been made, it would've been a much better film. Pacing, I think, is an issue for Guadagnino. Certain ideas are introduced but not elaborated on, while others that are not that important or relevant to the story get stretched out. If the running time were cut by 20-30 minutes, it would probably be a better, more efficient telling of the almost non-existent story.