Tyler Whitmore’s review published on Letterboxd:
Ralph Fiennes is truly one of the best actors of our generation. Exceptionally dramatic, humorous, terrifying, seductive, and slippery, he is one of our greatest chameleons and is so infectiously gripping anytime he graces the screen.
On the surface, this has a lot of parallels to the later released Ben Affleck starring Deep Water where sex, temptation, and attraction gnaw at these characters' minds like a parasite until the tension viciously boils over.
What Luca Guadagnino was able to add to this film is the quiet, poignant symbolism of the current political sphere in Italy. A luxurious vacation at a gorgeous pool-side, sea-surrounded villa sees Tilda Swinton, a famous musician recovering from vocal surgery and refusing to speak while she rests in decadence. A former lover and career partner, uninvited, re-enters her life and spurs all kinds of unwanted drama with catastrophic consequences. All this happens while dead bodies are washing ashore of refugees trying to flee Northern Africa for Italy, making these relationship squabbles and tales of a rockstar life feel so criminally insignificant. That clash between what you are watching on your screen, tucked away in an idyllic vacation home, with what is happening just outside the walls of the fence makes this sexy drama work on far more levels than initially meets the eye.