Ben Affleck caresses a snail fantastically in “Deep Water.” As Vic Van Allen, the wealthy, brooding, slug-collecting antihero of this languid erotic thriller, he research the little creatures as they slither round in his grasp and invitations bewildered onlookers to share his fascination. “A snail will crawl up a 12-foot wall to seek out its mate,” he says admiringly, as if he had been recognizing a kindred romantic. Sadly, Vic doesn’t go on to diagram their distinctive mating habits, which contain two units of genitalia (most land slugs are hermaphrodites) and the capturing of a particular “love dart” from one snail’s physique into one other. That sounds sophisticated and painful, if additionally mercifully devoid of emotional baggage. All in all, Vic prefers the corporate of snails to that of different people — an perspective he absolutely shares together with his late creator and fellow gastropod fanatic, Patricia Highsmith.
A gift-day adaptation of a 1957 Highsmith novel isn’t essentially what you’d count on from Adrian Lyne, the 81-year-old English director who made his status with the adulterous thrills of “Deadly Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal” and “Untrue.” However whereas “Deep Water,” his first new characteristic in 20 years, seems to be at first like certainly one of his patented hand-wringing, libido-tickling cleaning soap operas, it additionally has a relaxing Highsmithian misanthropy that cuts in another way than his earlier work. If Lyne’s earlier potboilers requested (or glossed over) the query of why a husband or spouse would stray from a contented marriage, “Deep Water” playfully ponders what would possibly maintain an sad one collectively: a toddler, positive, but in addition an open association of a form that was much less frequent in Highsmith’s period than the current one, during which this up to date film takes place.
However even when they inhabit a extra progressive-minded second, Vic and his spouse, Melinda (Ana de Armas), can’t assist however increase eyebrows of their interior circle. An inveterate flirt, Melinda pushes the phrases of their settlement to the bounds: She spends her days chasing good-looking younger males round their leafy New Orleans suburb, generally inviting them over to the home for dinner. Vic, an early retiree, spends most of histime elevating their candy younger daughter (Grace Jenkins), driving his mountain bike, tending his snails and watching Melinda’s revolving door of lovers with ever-darkening shades of contempt.
A part of the pleasure of “Deep Water” comes from watching him vent his scorn and undermine his rivals with out shedding his cool. Affleck, who as soon as upon a time would possibly’ve performed a type of rivals, embraces the function of the quietly seething cuckold. Vic performs merciless thoughts video games with one dreamy dullard (Brendan Miller), at one level calmly asserting that he killed certainly one of Melinda’s earlier lovers. (Is he mendacity? In that second, a minimum of, you’re not solely positive.) He will get even crueler with a piano instructor (Jacob Elordi) whom he suspects of tickling greater than Melinda’s ivories. At a sure level, we find out how Vic earned his thousands and thousands, and we’re meant to each cackle and shudder: Like quite a lot of tech bros having fun with an early retirement, he doesn’t thoughts having a number of corpses on his conscience.
There’s extra to the story: a startling rumor, a few events, a nosy neighbor (a usually sharp Tracy Letts), a number of unlucky “accidents” and a swimming pool that glows as ominously because the one in “La Piscine,” Jacques Deray’s 1969 traditional of intercourse, deceit and homicide. (Talking of French thrillers: Highsmith’s novel was beforehand tailored into the 1981 movie “Eaux Profondes,” starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert. A German TV adaptation, “Tiefe Wasser,” adopted in 1983.) However whereas Lyne is a self-professed Francophile, the films he appears to be referencing most blatantly listed here are his personal. As shot by Eigil Bryld, this “Deep Water” is sort of reassuringly shallow, a catalog of Architectural Digest furnishings and tasteful feminine nudity (wayward spouse, meet vintage bathtub). The slick sheen that has lengthy clung to Lyne’s photographs, since his days as a director of TV commercials, hasn’t deserted him during the last 20 years.
Nor has he misplaced the interaction of seriousness and silliness — and the genial refusal to tell apart between the 2 — that has lengthy animated his work. Once in a while, the film raises the intriguing chance that the Van Allens’ marital dilemma — her unbridled lust, his thinly hid jealousy — is perhaps a part of some kinky prolonged function play, as if Vic and Melinda had been performing out their very own (R-rated) cuckold-porn fantasy. No matter sexual thoughts video games are going down, they get an additional frisson from the casting of Affleck and De Armas, who famously started courting midproduction in 2019 however broke issues off in early 2021. Greater than a yr later, the film, which was made for theaters however delayed a number of instances by the COVID-19 pandemic, is being dumped on Hulu with a conspicuous lack of fanfare.
It’s attainable, whereas streaming “Deep Water,” to really feel a stab of nostalgia for the big-screen heyday of the Hollywood erotic thriller, a style to which Lyne and a number of other others — the Lawrence Kasdan of “Physique Warmth” and the Paul Verhoeven of “Fundamental Intuition” amongst them — made indelibly sweaty contributions within the ’80s and ’90s. However the resemblance between Lyne’s newest and people earlier lurid entertainments seems to be superficial at finest. Affleck and De Armas don’t evince a lot in the way in which of onscreen chemistry, which I imply much less as a dis to their now-defunct relationship than a praise to their grasp of this explicit task. Vic and Melinda’s fleeting sexual encounters — a little bit discreet fondling right here, some behind-the-wheel fellatio there — are tinged with disappointment and even hostility. Intimacy is achieved solely in matches of rage.
There’s numerous psychosexual layering to peel again right here, in different phrases, or there can be if Lyne had been extra totally answerable for his materials. Slithering alongside as intentionally as certainly one of Vic’s snails, “Deep Water” runs cold and warm; it’s generally a self-aware hoot and generally a disjointed drag. Even by the requirements of comedian reduction, Vic and Melinda’s buddies (performed by actors together with Sprint Mihok and Lil Rel Howery) at all times appear to be wandering in from a extra laid-back, extra entertaining film. Not-insignificant chunks of narrative appear to have gone lacking, particularly because the story barrels towards its startlingly abrupt end. De Armas, the film’s liveliest presence, can be maybe essentially the most ill-served by all this editing-room triage; she appears to be performing in fragments, as if she’d been directed to variously flirt, dance, drink, scream and slink round in black cocktail apparel with out pulling the items collectively.
Affleck fares higher; viral gossip could have decreased him to a punchline, however time and circumstance have conspired to make him a extra attention-grabbing actor than he typically will get credit score for being. A lot as he confirmed in “Gone Woman,” one other gleefully amoral potboiler a couple of loveless marriage, he excels at enjoying the emasculated dreamboat, the golden boy gone to seed. The resemblance to that earlier film is instructive. Notably and refreshingly, Lyne largely appears to have purged himself of the moralistic streak that’s typically marred his work; for the primary time in a very long time, he’s having fun with his characters’ awfulness somewhat than damning them for it. He doesn’t wish to punish them. He simply desires to carry them as much as the sunshine and watch them wriggle.
‘Deep Water’
Rated: R, for sexual content material, nudity, language and a few violence
Working time: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Taking part in: Obtainable March 18 on Hulu
Post a Comment