When screening film after film at a festival, I tend to go into each knowing only the title as well as the time and place it is being shown. Usually I try to scan quickly through the movie guide for a briefing on the synopsis, but rarely do I think to check whether the film I'm about to see is fiction or non-fiction. Most of the time make an assumption which it is from the guide's plot outline, but occasionally I'm caught off guard. For instance, The Big Bad Swim is not the documentary about an adult swimming class that I expected it to be. And I'm actually quite thankful that it isn't.

Instead, the film is a multi-character story centered around an adult swimming class where the students, ranging from a teenage girl to a middle-aged cop to an elderly woman, all share the common bond of never having taken that big dip into a recreational pool. Not all of the characters are prominently featured, though; the major plotlines concern Amy (Paget Brewster of the Showtime series Huff), a high school teacher in the middle of a divorce, Jordan (Jess Weixler), a Mohegan Sun card dealer who's also a stripper, and Noah (Jeff Branson), a one-time Olympic hopeful turned depressed swimming instructor.

As if my initial mistake wasn't enough, I remained confused for the first few minutes of the film, which opens with individual shots on each student as they introduce themselves on the first day of the class. Still thinking the movie was a documentary, my first impression was that it seemed very staged. This only made things more interesting because as the story unfolded, I accepted the film as one of the least artificial fiction films I've ever seen at a film festival.

While most new independent filmmakers try too hard with extraneous humor and insincere attempts to invent never-before-seen dramatic developments, director Ishai Setton and his screenwriter Daniel Schechter keep it extremely simple. That isn't to say the movie is boring, because I never felt like I'd seen these people before, and I easily became immersed in their lives. Regardless of all the times I've desired more fresh ideas in a movie, The Big Bad Swim reminded me that sometimes characters don't require novelty as long as they feel genuine.

A lot of credit for the film's lovability goes to the perfect casting of Brewster and Weixler, a stunning pair who each in her own way portrays the simultaneous sexiness and humility of her character with great consistency. Brewster is that mysteriously hot teacher we all had or at least fantasized about, exposed for her normality and reality. Weixler, on the other hand, refreshingly combines the plain-Jane-ness of actress Sarah Polley with the bombshell beauty of Heather Graham.

As a documentary telling the same story, The Big Bad Swim would have been unbearably dull. As a work of fiction it interests despite its own humdrum ambition, and it surprises with an enjoyable straightforwardness.