Deep Water
Adrian Lyne returns after a twenty-year hiatus with a beautifully made, slow-burn mystery romance.
We never know how other couples behave in private. The questionable quirks and the psychological shorthand built up over time will remain invisible to all but the eavesdropper. Most couples don’t even know that their behaviour is deeply unconventional (should their cosy world be opened up to outsiders). In Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water, adapted from the 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith, Vic and Melinda do not even behave like a couple. And therein lies the mystique. Being a Highsmith adaptation, Deep Water is of course a mystery-thriller, with the accent here more on the mystery than the thrills. But that is just fine because Lyne is such a consummate artist that the ambiguity remains engaging until the end.
As Vic (a trimmed-down Ben Affleck) returns from one of his regular bicycle rides, he is greeted by Melinda (Ana de Armas) sitting on the outside steps with an enigmatic expression on her face. She is summing him up: a blend of the affectionate and the questioning flitting across her features. “What?” he asks. “Nothing,” she replies, before disappearing into the house. Inside, a five-year-old girl (Grace Jenkins) is kicking up a jolly storm while singing along to ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ as summoned up by Alexa. It is a scene of chaos and Melinda is short-tempered as she prepares herself for a party, with a glass of red already in her hand. Melinda likes to drink – and to smoke – and she is a pathological flirt. Vic meanwhile just hovers on the side-lines, endowed with an inscrutable look of love, and perhaps jealousy. At the party, Melinda is making out with a young Brad Pitt type with long blonde hair (Brendan C. Miller), and when Vic has a chance to talk to him alone, he confides in the young man that he killed Melinda’s last “friend.”
The drama on which the film is predicated boils down to the unknowingness of it. Melinda obviously has a whole set of moral values at odds with Vic’s. We feel their love, but we also feel Vic’s discomfort. She accuses him of never letting go (he seldom drinks), of showing no passion. Conversely, he is appalled by her abandonment, but maybe also aroused by how her beauty lures other, younger men into her orbit. They sleep in different beds, but their sexual attraction for each other remains undiminished. Adrian Lyne is at home with the gender danger zone – his previous films include 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal.
The last movie Lyne made was Unfaithful, twenty years ago. That’s quite a gap between projects and the director would appear to have lost none of his eye for detail in the intervening period. Unlike the filmmakers that have sprung up in the meantime, Lyne remains unafraid to tease out the drama, eschewing sharp cuts and cheap melodrama. There’s plenty to absorb on screen without being ushered onto the next adrenalin high. Besides, we have the colourful vistas of New Orleans and that impenetrable visage of Ben Affleck, on whose face the drama pivots. Some viewers may become impatient with the leisurely pace, a tempo reflected in the attentive care Vic lavishes on his collection of pet snails in his atmospherically controlled man cave. The gastropods reflect his nature.
Adrian Lyne, now 81, first became attached to Deep Water nine years ago, a project that more than reflects the themes of his last film, and at times it is equally uncomfortable to watch. Lyne remains the high priest of high-end pulp fiction, but his masterly style and visual eye endures. The film is such a pleasure to watch, even when the occasional implausibility jars. There are good performances, too, with a nice supporting turn from Tracy Letts as a defensive, suspicious short story writer (and aspiring scenarist), and especially from Grace Jenkins as Vic and Melinda’s precocious five-year-old daughter who is as worried about her mother as Vic is. She really is a highlight and when she sings along to Leo Sayer’s ‘You Make Me Feel Like Dancing’ in her car seat, she reinforces the belief that life really must continue, in spite of all its complications.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Lil Rel Howery, Dash Mihok, Finn Wittrock, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Rachel Blanchard, Michael Braun, Jade Fernandez, Grace Jenkins, Brendan C. Miller, Devyn Tyler, Jeff Pope.
Dir Adrian Lyne, Pro Arnon Milchan, Guymon Casady, Benjamin Forkner and Anthony Katagas, Screenplay Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, Ph Eigil Bryld, Pro Des Jeannine Oppewall, Ed Tim Squyres and Andrew Mondshein, Music Marco Beltrami, Costumes Heidi Bivens, Dialect coach Jessica Drake.
20th Century Studios/Regency Enterprises/New Regency/Entertainment 360/Film Rites/Entertainment One/Keep Your Head-Amazon Prime Video.
115 mins. USA/Australia/Canada. 2022. UK and US Rel: 18 March 2022. Cert. 18.
