Pool Season
The programmer's note
A comedy that understands the funniest thing two people can be is correct. Raghunathan mostly makes drama and the discipline shows: he stages the fight in wide two-shots and refuses the cutaway that would tell you whose side to take. Watch the bylaw officer, who has four lines and a whole inner life. Thirteen minutes, best on a Sunday, and it plays beautifully in a room full of people.
The film
Tej has waited four years for this pool. It arrives on a flatbed on the Friday of the long weekend, and by Saturday morning it is up, full, and, according to the tape measure belonging to Mr. Villanueva next door, eleven inches over the line. Mr. Villanueva has the survey. He has had the survey since 2011. The negotiation happens over the fence, in stages, with escalating third parties: a brother-in-law with a theory, a bylaw officer who has somewhere else to be, and eight children who are already in the water and cannot be got out of it. Raghunathan plays it dry and shoots it wide, usually taking in both backyards at once, so the audience always sees two men committing to positions they cannot hold. Thirteen minutes. The pool is real, the survey is real, and everyone involved is entirely reasonable, which is the problem.
