There are plenty of good reasons to catch A Bigger Splash, including filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s characteristically sensual touch and Ralph Fiennes’ poignantly hilarious performance as a music industry relic. For some of us—a lot of us, probably—there’s also the film’s fan-obsessed references to the Rolling Stones. “Somehow, they are the alpha and the omega,” says Guadagnino, talking to the Straight from his home in Palermo, Italy. “The beginning and the end of rock ‘n’ roll, yeah.”

The filmmaker is responding, perhaps not entirely seriously, to a question about the very condition of rock ‘n’ roll itself, and whether it should be allowed, finally, to just die along with Mick ‘n’ Keef, assuming they ever die. If it’s a harsh proposition, it’s also very much in tune with the film’s themes, in which a Bowie-esque rock star played by Tilda Swinton holes up on a luxury Mediterranean island with her younger boyfriend while she recovers from throat surgery. Their idyll is interrupted when gregarious former producer/lover Harry Hawks turns up with his newly-discovered 22-year-old daughter. All sexual tensions aside, A Bigger Splash looks subtextually like an elegy to a rock-star lifestyle that’s going extinct.

“I thought a lot about that, and I think it’s a great way to put it—the elegy,” says Guadagnino. “It is in a way, and it’s not in another way. Because it’s about the ones who are in the position of nostalgia for rock ‘n’ roll. You know, the rock ‘n’ roll attitude is something that’s in time and out of time at the same time; it’s about wanting something that cannot be done again; living under the motto of an eternal youth that is not being maintained. But also it’s about the erotic energy of the music itelf. It’s something that overcomes you whenever you play rock ‘n’ roll. So it’s all these things together. It’s a beautiful contradiction.”

Embodying this beautiful contradiction at its loudest (and most amusing) is Fiennes, who nevertheless brings “his capacity for portraying deep melancholy” to the role of Harry. “He’s a deep person and I love him very much. He’s someone with whom having a conversation is really worth it, because it’s not a casual conversation; it’s a committed one,” says the filmmaker, who took Fiennes to see the Stones play Rome before shooting commenced, complete with a pre-show cup of tea with Ron Wood and Charlie Watts (“A fine man,” is Guadagnino’s estimation of the eternally elegant drummer. “Wow.”)

He actually worked quite closely with the organization, whom he describes as “great allies”, although the Stones clearly have a good friend in Luca Guadagnino. In the film, Harry tells a story about the (fictional) production work he did on Voodoo Lounge, and later performs an uninhibited dance sequence to “Emotional Rescue”. Either one is hardly the greatest moment in the Stones’ discography. “I like underdogs, and this is the underdog music of the Rolling Stones,” offers the filmmaker, with audible glee. Okay: are there any unsung Stones masterpieces that deserve a second chance? “Bridges to Babylon,” he answers without a moment’s hesitation. “...Great...!”

Georgia Straight, May 2016