The distance between wealth and poverty is only the most obvious chasm measured in The Pool. Set in India and filmed by Milwaukee writer-director Chris Smith from a story by Randy Russell, The Pool's protagonist is an 18-year-old country lad struggling to keep his chin up in the big city. The boy, Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan), does the hard work of washing terrazzo floors by hand and the harder work of scrubbing public toilets with a brush. One day he climbs onto the branch of a spreading tree and peers over a wall into another world, a place of apparent calm far from the crowded clamor outside.
But the denizens of the whitewashed mansion, whose walled garden wraps around a swimming pool shimmering blue and white in the heat, are not living in paradise. The distance between the father and his teenage daughter is as wide as the gap separating them from Venkatesh. The chasm between the boy and the affluent family can only be bridged in part.
The Pool is another ambitious departure for Smith, whose scope has broadened considerably since the debut of American Movie, a culty look at the demons of artistic ambition among Milwaukee's lower middle class. Much of Smith's work has manifested a social conscience and in his latest film, that conscience assumes the form of profound human sympathy. The Pool is subtitled and filmed on location in the Indian state of Goa, a former Portuguese colony teeming with color, traffic and street life. Like an Italian neo-realist film, The Pool catches reality on the fly through the lens of its story of an individual trying to overcome the poverty of his circumstances. Enhancing the mood is a lovely mandolin and accordion powered score that whispers Italy (but possibly echoes Goa's Portuguese past).
Like his plucky 11-year-old companion Jhangir (Jhangir Badshah), with whom he hustles plastic bags on the streets, Venkatesh has dreams of going to school and learning to read, starting a business and attaining a comfortable life. From the perch of his tree branch he repeatedly observes the alien lives of the people he aspires to join, a successful man of means, Nana (Nana Patekar), and his sulking, rebellious daughter, Ayesha (Ayesha Mohan).
Before long he stealthily follows them into the city, studying their habits with a voyeur's wide eyes. Ingratiating himself with Nana, Venkatesh gets part-time work in their garden and tries to strike up conversations with his boss and the boss' daughter, neither of whom have much interest at first in their awkward if eager servant. Some of The Pool's strongest moments communicate the lack of communication between them. Joining the sullen silence between father and daughter is the snip-snip of hedge clippers and the plucking of dead leaves as Nana and Venkatesh work side by side in the garden. The boy's attempts at conversation are initially greeted by Nana with a verbal shrug.
The pool at the center of the garden, unruffled by any swimmer, is the film's core image, an emblem of luxury in an impoverished city and a symbol of hope for Venkatesh. As the boy gradually draws out Nana and Ayesha, he learns that it's also a place of tragic memory for the unhappy family. "If I owned that pool I'd jump in everyday," Venkatesh tells Jhangir, enthusiasm undampened. But he can do nothing but stare and run his fingers across the warm, wet surface.
All of the expected Hollywood plot turns are avoided and the natural ease of actors in familiar settings lends The Pool the air of fiction carefully crossbred with reality. The characters behave like actual people, unpredictably, often against self-interest, with their heart of mystery preserved.
