Venkatesh Chavan imagines a more luxurious life in The Pool, the first narrative feature from director Chris Smith

The Pool

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The Pool is a Hindi-language film directed by a man who speaks no Hindi, with a cast that, for the most part, speaks no English. It is a movie made entirely through interpreters.

Director Chris Smith, widely admired for the absolutely delightful documentary American Movie (1999), has made The Pool his debut excursion into narrative film, although the “narrative” is so subtle that it’s barely perceptible. Set in Goa, India, The Pool follows the daily activities of Venkatesh (Chavan), a teenager who does housekeeping for a hotel, and makes a little income on the side selling plastic bags on the street with his 11-year-old buddy Jhangir (Jhangir Bhadshah). Venkatesh spends his leisure time up a tree, staring at the lovely but unused swimming pool in the backyard of a nearby mansion inhabited only by a gruff, middle-aged man (Nana Patekar) and his pretty teenage daughter (Ayesha Mohan). To Venkatesh, the pool represents magnificent luxury, and he dreams about being able to swim in it. He befriends the owner and his daughter, and helps out with the gardening around the yard. His interaction with pretty young Ayesha is sweet but awkward, as he’s illiterate and she always has her nose in a book. Venkatesh harbours a desire to go to school and improve his lot, and Ayesha’s father begins to suspect that he’d do well with an education.

The cast consists mostly of non-actors who behave quite naturally in front of the camera, and a few of their personal anecdotes have actually been included in the film. Ironically, these anecdotes don’t fit in at all with the easygoing nature of the rest of the film. The characters will be doing a bit of gardening, and suddenly Venkatesh will blurt out that he once got locked up in a room for three days by a weirdo, or that he’s been interrogated by the police, or that he once got posessed by a ghost. The other characters will listen, shrug, and go back to what they were doing, and the weird anecdote will never be mentioned again.

This is a pleasant film in which very little actually happens. Documentarian Smith seems so intrigued by mundane life that he doesn’t feel the need to add things like conflict or plot development. The best way to enjoy it is to prepare yourself for a largely incident-free character study. It’s a remarkably refreshing film in that it avoids doing the expected, and it does so by not doing much of anything. Still, you’ll find yourself attached to the characters, and keep thinking about them long after the film ends.