Conversations By A Californian Swimming Pool (A Sweet Disaster)

"Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool" by David Hopkins from Sleeping Weazel on Vimeo.

The only two dimensional animation of the Sweet Disaster series, Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool is also (as the title might indicate) one of the wordier entries into the series, being the only film in which the dialogue takes the form of a two-way discussion (Dreamless Sleep has no dialogue, while Babylon, Death of a Speechwriter and Paradise Regained each contain only one speaking character). The featured voices (courtesy of Julia Hills and Philip Manikum) are those of two former First Ladies, who reflect upon a variety of topics relating to communists, nuclear warfare and their husbands' degraded physical anatomies as said husbands indulge in a bit of horseplay in an outside swimming pool.  Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool was directed by Andrew Franks, whose other contribution to Sweet Disaster was Paradise Regained.

Conversations has a notably more playful and surrealist vibe than the other Sweet Disaster films (the electronic soundtrack by Martin Kiszko, coupled with the sheer oddness of much of the imagery, gives it the vibrancy of a contemporary pop music video), although the swipes, aimed here at Ronald Reagan and at US foreign policy, are no less scathing.  The two ex-Presidents, seen only in their swimming trunks and splashing around in a distinctly infantile manner, come off as predictably ludicrous figures, although things take on a more sinister turn when we follow them below the water surface and see a barrage of imagery - some of it weird, much of it utterly macabre - unfolding against a backdrop of square pool tiles.  The swimming pool, it seems, is a gigantic burial ground (one of the film's favourite techniques is to hint at the decay lurking beneath the affluence, hence why we later see a fly buzzing around the surface of the pool), and the bizarre chlorine-drenched fantasies of the two former Presidents offer an acidulous blend of buffoonery and horror.  The scene in which the ex-Presidents are seen obliterating various communist figures with futuristic ray guns recalls how closely interlinked aspects of Reagan's career were with the Star Wars fixation which had permeated the zeitgeist of the time - both his reference to the Soviet Union as being an "Evil Empire" and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Reagan's proposed space-based anti-ballistic missile system, popularly dubbed "Star Wars" by a media which widely deemed the initiative as belonging to much the same realm of science fiction fantasy as George Lucas's 1977 film.  Reagan was keen to promote the notion that nuclear warfare was little more than the logical extension of an ongoing battle between Good and Evil, a rhetoric arguably better suited to the sensibilities of a Hollywood narrative than to conflict in the real world.  Here, the battle for US supremacy is framed within the context of a childish pool game, with the commentary of the ex-Presidents' wives emphasising just how delicately the fate of the world hung in the balance ("one telephone call") and the skeletal remains at the bottom of the pool signalling the graveness of the potential consequences.

These sequences are framed within yet another context - the rather snarky discussion between the two former First Ladies, which cumulates in a mutual joke regarding how, although it is never explicitly stated, the stresses of the Cold War have affected their husbands' abilities to satisfy them sexually ("really, they're not much fun").  The two woman are shallow and cynical much as their husbands are childish and absurd, and the vocal performances from Hills and Manikum are both excellent, conveying perfectly the snark, vapidness and bored indifference which stands in contrast to the wordless raucousness of the two ex-Presidents.

The decay and physical degradation of the human body is a recurring theme of Conversations, beginning with the former First Ladies' reflections on how each of their husbands has been physically compromised by their years of service in the White House ("there are parts of them missing" as Hills' character observes).  One of them lost a kidney in an assassination attempt, while the other has a pacemaker installed in his heart (here, it's difficult to miss the pun on "peacemaker", with Hills' bored and oft-repeated remark, "If you say so", slyly undermining the suggestion).  We might notice, meanwhile, the rather striking manner in which their character designs differ from those of their husbands - whereas the two ex-Presidents are depicted as graceless, overgrown schoolboys, the former First Ladies have an almost inhuman, vaguely sinister guise, what with their lack of certain corporeal features.  They themselves have been rendered with parts of them missing - they lack hands (the drinks glass that Manikum's character is "holding" appears to move all by itself), and their heads are mostly invisible, with facial features protruding from long, pole-like necks and their hairpieces unattached to their bodies (in another of the film's surreal sight gags, their hair is buoyed upwards as they practice breathing techniques - their comments upon the importance of proper circulation adding in further nods to the fragility of the human body, and those on complexion seeming particularly ironic given their lack of fully-formed faces).  Their wiry frames and the recurring emphasis on their clothing, which changes at multiple points over the course of the film, gives them the appearance of coat hangers, or of shop window mannequins, and with it a superficial, materialistic vibe, which acts as a further symbol of affluence (and hints that, in spite of their complaints, both women are living comfortably as a result of their husbands' activities).  At the same time, the grotesqueness of their depleted, almost skeletal forms hints, much like the fly circling above the pool, at a macabre underbelly to all this luxury, the thin line between life and annihilation being continuously evoked in their repeated emphasis on the "one telephone call" that would, in the words of Manikum's character, have "got the problem out of the way".  As the two women snicker about what's left of their husbands, the mass of human remains seen lining the bottom of the pool shows this physical degradation at its most horrific and provides a gruesome contrast to the levity of their musings.

In the end, Manikum's character draws a line under the ribbing with the assertion that, "It's time for them to get out of the pool.  God knows what they get up to in there."  There's the insinuation, yet again, that these former presidents are little more than overgrown kids whose primary impulses are to butt heads and make giant splashes, but it also hints toward a darker side to these games of childish empowerment, as something that the world cannot afford to underestimate or turn its back on.  For fun, as we have been told, was not part of God's plan for the universe.