In the off-year 2003 at the Cannes Film Festival, François Ozon’s frothy but entertaining Swimming Pool was one of the few movies in Competition to escape the wrath of the international film-critic corps. Nobody considered it worthy of a Palme d’Or, but many in the press thought that Charlotte Rampling, playing brittle, nervous British crime novelist Sarah Morton, should have won for Best Actress (it went to Marie-Josée Croze in Denys Arcand’s Les invasions barbares). Or perhaps shared the prize with her lively French co-star. Ludivine Sagnier portrays Eurotrash twentysomething Julie, whose crude television watching, topless swimming, and public fornication threatens to ruin Ms. Morton’s sedate sojourn on the Provencal country estate where she’s struggling to write a new murder novel.

"I read Agatha Christie when a child, yes, I do like her novels," Ozon said at Cannes. "But with this movie, I thought more about Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith. I’m particularly interested in the discrepancy of outward appearance, what these women looked like, and what they wrote about. Highsmith is always concerned with exchange of identities. That’s important to me, and I’ve used it in several films."

In interviews, Ozon has explained how he studied the pathologies of British women crime writers and noted how "a number of them drink too much, have repressed lesbian tendencies, and are fascinated by perversions." That’s how he built the character of Sarah Morton in the screenplay: underneath the rigid, puritanical veneer, there’s a voyeuristic interest in the naked female body, and in murder.

"I looked at pictures of Rendell and Highsmith," said Rampling, who accompanied Ozon to Cannes. "Highsmith had a ravaged face. Those writers tend to have very short hair."

How did Ozon choose Rampling for Sarah Morton?

"I was looking for a woman who was 50 years old and who was beautiful, who was not ‘overhauled,’ and who was willing to wear a swimsuit." And yet who is protective of her dignity. "The very first time I saw Charlotte Rampling, I said, ‘I would like to film you using a vacuum cleaner.’ She was very British and answered, ‘I think not.’ "

But Rampling went on to star in Ozon’s 2000 film Sous le sable/Under the Sand. And he insisted she play the lead in Swimming Pool before he’d written a word of the script. "I asked Charlotte to play this bad-tempered woman. She said yes." Ozon consulted with her during the four months he wrote the screenplay, his first in English. Then he cast Ludivine Sagnier, who had appeared in his 2000 film Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes/Water Drops on Burning Rocks and last year’s 8 femmes/8 Women.

"We filmed in chronological order," Rampling said. "We started with Sarah coming from England. She goes to the south of France with the sun and the geography. Then this girl comes along. When Ludivine arrived on the set a week later, the interruption was felt by both me the actor and me the character." But whereas in the movie Sarah and Julie are strained, uncomfortable housemates, Rampling said, "Ludivine and I had instant rapport. She reminds me of me at her age: honest, intelligent, and wanting to be part of the real world."

Ozon added, "The idea was to shoot something different from 8 Women, which was a very heavy production. I felt a need for something more intimate, almost a holiday. I decided to work with only two women, and with whom I get along very well. Who are my friends. I’m always more interested in women characters than male. They are more complex, and I get along better with actresses than actors. Maybe that explains my films: I have to feel desire for the actors, not necessarily to sleep with them."

On one point the Cannes critics were divided: is everything in the movie real or are there, in part, fantasy projections? Ozon answered, "This film is about the creative process. It could be just as well be about an artist or a filmmaker as a novelist." Or the spectator. "I want everyone in the audience to write their own versions of Sarah Morton’s book. If there are as many interpretations as members of the audience, I want that."

IN MARK MOSKOWITZ’S wonderful Stone Reader, which describes his search for Dow Mossman, the author of the abysmally forgotten 1972 novel The Stones of Summer, the filmmaker discovers a couple of copies on the Internet for $20 each. That was then, before the documentary transformed The Stones of Summer into a cult item. On abebooks.com, you can purchase first editions for $900 or $950. What’s even more absurd is that the 1972 Popular Library paperback is available for $450.

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary@world.std.com