Chris Smith’s little-seen “American Job” (1996), financed with money won from Twinkies the year of its sixty-fifth anniversary, is one of the most auspicious of no-budget deadpan fiction debuts of recent years, but its invisibility (reportedly, the negative was damaged and only recently restored) has given Smith the profile of being a fact-based documentarian with films like the seriocomic “American Movie” and “The Yes Men.” But with “The Pool, ” based on a short story by Randy Russell set in Iowa, Smith announces himself as a gifted filmmaker whose imagination belongs in the feature realm. Transposed to India and shot in Hindi, “The Pool” follows Venkatesh (Venkatesh Savan), a “room boy” at a hotel in Goa, who dreams of a nearby home with an enviable garden and pool, and who becomes obsessed with the family who owns them and what their lives must be like. The film’s high-definition images are ravishing, the performances impeccable, especially from the child actors. Dreamy stuff. 98m. (Ray Pride)
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