Since watching A Bigger Splash last night, most people I’ve bumped into have asked me whether or not I liked it. This means I keep having to respond with ‘I liked watching it but I’m not sure if I like it’, which is the kind of lame pseudo-paradoxical, pseudo-intellectual frippery that my supervisor calls ‘fancy footwork’, recommending that I try to come to an actual conclusion. But the film is not one that makes itself available to conclusions; it has no clear genre or preoccupation guiding it, not even a consistent inclination towards comedy or absurdity. The plot description on Wikipedia is two and a half lines long. Every detail is made to feel suggestive of something in the offing – the act of picking up and throwing away snakes, and news of the refugees arriving on the Sicilian island (Pantelleria by the way) are details that are pointedly repeated – but there is no reward for paying attention to them.

My History of Art friend, who watched the film with me and as such represents a not-to-be-ignored 14.3 per cent of the audience response, told me, as we weaved between tottering drunks outside Spoons, that it seemed to her that “the director was, like, ‘isn’t it funny that people think we’re making art and all we have is Italian scenery, lots of actors and some narrative.’”

For there is some narrative. The film revolves around the sexual tensions created by the unexpected gathering of four characters in a remote villa: Marianne (Tilda Swinton), an old school glam rocker who’s resting her voice after an operation, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), her introvert documentary-maker boyfriend, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), her ex-boyfriend and music producer rhapsode, and Penelope (Dakota Johnson) the newly discovered daughter of Harry and beach blonde nymphet. It’s worth the ticket price for the acting alone. Tilda Swinton is utterly captivating as, although she barely speaks, she draws the characters around and to her with her signature hard-edged sexuality, which is softened here by the gorgeous wardrobe Raf Simons (ex-creative director of Dior) provides. It is certainly very effective propaganda for the backless dress. Fiennes is magical too, creating much of the film’s humour through his maniacal energy as he runs about the villa completely naked, his penis jiggling about all over the place, spitting truths at other characters. “We’re all obscene,” he says to Paul in the glow of the pool-lights at night-time, clutching a bottle of wine, starkers and accusatory.

The poolside is certainly a dangerous place to be in A Bigger Splash. This rectangular nucleus of the film’s action acts as a kind of pagan altar for the desires of the four characters as they provocatively undress, bathe, and sunbathe around its four sides. There is a brilliant moment when Johnson’s character, alone with Paul, jumps into the pool after a few euros she has thrown in, scoops them up from the bottom in one breath and dumps them in front of him, declaring that she ‘needs more treasure’. It’s a child’s game but she is learning how to use her sexuality to ensnare other participants to her own ends. The film, I suppose, could have been a coming-of-age story for her character if she had taken centre stage more often.

I still can’t work out if I like this film. In conversation with the Guardian’s Andrew Pulver, the director Luca Guadagnino expressed his desire to “avoid drama” and to instead “lead the storyline through behaviour”. This attitude is the source of both the film’s greatest success and failure. The focus on behaviour is explored through lingering shots which concentrate on the way the characters throw down their sunglasses, or on the moments where a character converses with another while looking directly into the camera, creating an intense sense of intimacy between audience and actors. Yet these moments say very little, so that, while interesting, they fail to give you a sense of what the essence of the film really is. In short, the film is a refreshing delicacy to nibble on that will nonetheless leave you hungry.