Guadagnino’s 2015 psychological drama starring Tilda Swinton as a rock star whose ex (Ralph Fiennes) and his seductive daughter (Dakota Johnson) interrupt her vacation with her current boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts) is now being recut into a longer iteration, titled “An Even Bigger Splash.” “I got a great honor at the Göteborg Film Festival. They gave me this lifetime achievement, which embarrasses me to say. I was 50 then,” Guadagnino told Vanity Fair about what inspired the recut of the film. “But I love Göteborg so I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ They wanted to make a retrospective of my movies and I said, ‘No, that’s not possible, because I don’t have a body of work that can make into a retrospective yet!’ I said, ‘Why don’t we show you a little treat?’”
The “Bones and All” director continued, “With my editor Walter Fasano, we thought about the way in which we truly loved the first cut of ‘A Bigger Splash.’ Usually I am not very sentimental about the early cuts of my movies. But this early cut was something that I was so proud of. I called StudioCanal and I said, ‘Guys, I think you should review this again and allow me to show it in Göteborg as an homage to the festival.’” Loosely inspired by “La Piscine,” the recut of “A Bigger Splash” led StudioCanal to say “oh my god, you are completely right, we missed it then.” Guadagnino presented “An Even Bigger Splash” at Göteborg with “no effects, no mix, nothing.” “But we knew that we were going to then finish it in order to rerelease it somehow,” he said. “Now we are in the process of finalizing it. It’s going to take a few months, because we need to scan, make the effects, new songs, new mix, new everything. But we’ll do it and then we’ll see what we can do with it, which will make some festivals and probably a small festival run. Then the powerful streamers can get it. I don’t know, we’ll see. But I’m very happy about it. There were so many things that we had to leave on the table at the time, which I’m very proud to bring back.” Guadagnino especially shared his affection for Swinton’s performance and character, Marianne. “There’s an in-depthness, about the desire unleashed in the movie and the fandom to Marianne Lane [played by Swinton],” the “Call Me By Your Name” auteur said. “The opportunity to bring it back to somewhere new and to go with them all again, that’s magic.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
