| Every year Hollywood offers a back-to-school film, and for 2002 the scary offering is Swimfan, directed by John Polson. Ben Cronin (played by Jesse Bradford) is a senior at a high school in New Jersey (though the filming is on Long Island); he is a top swimmer. Coach Simkins (played by Dan Hedaya) tells him to focus on perfecting his swimming because a Stanford recruiter will be on campus for a swim meet in ten days. Ben lives with his mother, as she divorced his father on the grounds of infidelity, and a Stanford scholarship would open up opportunities for a better life. Ben got in trouble after the divorce and served six months in a juvenile detention facility, where he learned the joy of swimming. Ben’s girlfriend Amy Miller (played by Shiri Appleby) provides a lot of support to him, and they are very much in love. On the first day of school, however, Madison Bell (played by Erika Christensen) asks Ben to break into her locker and later tries other ploys to take him away from Amy. In one of her schemes, they end up in the pool together, she corners him, reaches into his swimsuit, and they kiss. But eighty-one emails under the screenname “swimfan” and numerous other conversations and unexpected encounters are too much, constituting stalking, so Ben tells Madison to back off. Then Madison takes revenge. She switches medicines on a tray in the hospital where Ben works part-time, a patient nearly dies, and Ben is fired. She gets steroids into Ben’s body before the important swim meet, so he is disqualified. Next, she frames him for killing a fellow swimmer; she runs Amy off the road, also framing Ben; she knocks Ben and his mother unconscious; and then she tries to drown Amy. So what’s the reason for Madison’s sociopathic behavior? Has she decided to put her knowledge of Fatal Attraction (1987) to work? Her parents are in Europe, she says, so she is living with relatives, and they have quite a mansion. She comes on strong with guys. She claims to have a boyfriend in New York. Curious about her obvious psychological malady, Ben decides to sneak into her room in the mansion, finding out that she saved clippings about him as well as mementos. All of a sudden, as she is about to enter her room, her nerdy cousin Dante (played by James DeBello) appears, gives Ben a box, and shows him how to exit without being discovered. When Ben later opens the box, he discovers that Madison’s New York boyfriend was a high school baseball player, whose clippings she also saved. Soon, Madison drives Ben to a nursing home, and Ben discovers that her baseball boyfriend is in a coma, so he adds up the clues, organizes a way to trap Madison, and the climax of the film is how she gets caught. What’s the point of the film? As a welcome-back-to-high-school film, does Swimfan warn high school students to be faithful to their girlfriends, to keep their eyes on the prize, and to beware the newest slut in school? As a date film, the result may instead be a lot of sexy action in the pool. MH |