#Deep water movie movie
If Lyne’s earlier potboilers asked (or glossed over) the question of why a husband or wife would stray from a happy marriage, “Deep Water” playfully ponders what might hold an unhappy one together: a child, sure, but also an open arrangement of a sort that was less common in Highsmith’s era than the present one, in which this updated movie takes place.īut even if they inhabit a more progressive-minded moment, Vic and his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas), can’t help but raise eyebrows in their inner circle.
All in all, Vic prefers the company of snails to that of other humans - an attitude he surely shares with his late creator and fellow gastropod enthusiast, Patricia Highsmith.Ī present-day adaptation of a 1957 Highsmith novel isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from Adrian Lyne, the 81-year-old English director who made his reputation with the adulterous thrills of “Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal” and “Unfaithful.” But while “Deep Water,” his first new feature in 20 years, looks at first like one of his patented hand-wringing, libido-tickling soap operas, it also has a chilled Highsmithian misanthropy that cuts differently than his previous work. That sounds complicated and painful, if also mercifully devoid of emotional baggage. Sadly, Vic doesn’t go on to diagram their unique mating habits, which involve two sets of genitalia (most land slugs are hermaphrodites) and the shooting of a special “love dart” from one snail’s body into another.
“A snail will crawl up a 12-foot wall to find its mate,” he says admiringly, as if he were recognizing a kindred romantic. Moreover, attempts to build symbolism around Vic's collection of live snails (?) and his daughter's love of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" simply hit a wall, and Deep Water starts to feel shallower and shallower as it heads toward its gloomy, pathetic conclusion.Ben Affleck caresses a snail beautifully in “Deep Water.” As Vic Van Allen, the rich, brooding, slug-collecting antihero of this languid erotic thriller, he studies the little creatures as they slither around in his grasp and invites bewildered onlookers to share his fascination. This is marked by Affleck's magical movie beard, which remains exactly the same length in every scene. There's no sense of time passing between events or of anything building everything seems reset at the beginning of every sequence. Not to mention that, no matter how broken up Melinda may seem over the loss of her most recent conquest, she immediately starts pursuing a new one. But things quickly fall apart as we realize that this couple seems to do nothing except go to parties every night with the same people. It begins well, setting up a simmering tension between Affleck and de Armas, both of whom seem committed to their roles Affleck is chillingly stoic, while de Armas is recklessly sensual. Adrian Lyne, the octogenarian director of Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, and Unfaithful, returns after a 20-year gap with Deep Water. A cheesy erotic thriller from a veteran of the genre, based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, may sound like movie gold, but the end result is eye-rollingly ridiculous.
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