2025-08-14
6 分钟The economist.
Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
This is editor's picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist read aloud.
Enjoy.
It culminates in homicide, by way of skinny-dipping, underwater handstands, erotic rivalry and lots of seafood.
But the twisted drama of "A Bigger Splash",
a film starring Ralph Fiennes, opens with an inquiry familiar to many holiday-planners.
Flying into an Italian island for a fateful reunion with an ex,
Mr Fiennes's character brings along his devious daughter (Dakota Johnson).
She has a question: "Is there a pool?"
Especially for denizens of rainy places like Britain, summer holidays and swimming pools are inseparable.
A pool is cool comfort on a hot day, delicious indolence in a frantic world.
You may find yourself in one soon (or now).
But dip your toe into fictional pools, and this simple pleasure seems more complicated.
A pool can be an oasis, a theatre, a mirror or a tomb.
It is a cauldron of opposites: success and regression, life and death, innocence and lust.
A swimming pool means you've arrived.
Excited children strip off and leap into the blue as parents grapple with the luggage.
But it also connotes arrival in a social sense.