‘Deep Water’ Review: Erotic Thriller With Snails

Adrian Lyne’s new movie, Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, brings the erotic thriller back to the fore, but it’s a slimy affair. An Amazon Studios film in association with Regency Enterprises and Entertainment One, Deep Water is showing on Hulu in the U.S. and on Prime Video in the U.K. and worldwide (excluding the U.S., China, Russia and Middle East) since March 18.

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name (a psychological crime thriller, and not so erotic), Deep Water follows Vic (played by Ben Affleck) and Melinda (played by Ana de Armas), a couple with a young daughter living in New Orleans. Their marriage is visibly disintegrating. Melinda openly flirts with younger men in front of Vic and Melinda’s social group. As Melinda flaunts her extramarital dalliances in her husband’s face, Vic remains seemingly composed, if boiling with jealousy inside. Trouble is in the air when Melinda’s lovers start going missing.

Director Adrian Lyne is known for his erotic thrillers, most of which are now cult movies, such as Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful, as well as 9 1/2 Weeks (which isn’t a thriller, but an erotic drama). Deep Water is not quite on a par with Lyne’s previous work, which is largely due to two unsympathetic lead characters, and a repetitive narrative full of side glances with little psychological depth.

Although Vic and Melinda’s relationship makes sense in Highsmith’s novel, set in the late 1950s, it is a hard push to understand it in a contemporary setting—divorce isn’t so uncommon nowadays. In Lyne’s film, Melinda and Vic’s relationship is a murky and complicated one. Melinda is unfaithful, and yet remains married. Vic is clearly unhappy with the awkward situations Melinda repeatedly forces him into with her lovers, and yet he remains married to Melinda. At the party, Melinda flirts with a young man all night long. When the young man approaches Vic to thank him for letting him see his wife, Vic tells him that he killed Melinda’s last lover. The rumor quickly goes round their social group that Vic murdered this man, and may be killing his wife’s lovers. Not one of his friends believes him capable of such an act, apart from writer, Don Wilson (played by Tracy Letts), and Vic’s adorable daughter Trixie (played by Grace Jenkins).

Apart from their daughter, the film fails to show what keeps this couple together, but for one little detail. There is an exchange of glances between the married couple at play in this movie. One keeps catching the other gazing at the other. In the opening sequence, Vic catches his wife, who is sitting on stairs, looking at him longingly as he undresses. At the first party in the movie, Melinda catches her husband gazing at her from inside the house as she kisses another man in the garden. This interplay of glances repeats throughout the movie, and suggests how Vic and Melinda play with the sexual chemistry and desire still present between them. These glances make this otherwise seemingly loveless marriage a rather perplexing one, and signals the very different ending the film has from Highsmith’s original story. Vic’s actions in the film, no longer a mere observer, will ignite Melinda’s desire for her husband, the film thus suggests.

Ben Affleck perfectly captures the simmering tension of jealousy of his character, especially in those moments when Vic watches Melinda with other men. His contained calmness always seems at the razor-sharp edge of bursting into outright rage, and it is no great surprise when it finally does. Vic only really finds peace, the film inadvertently suggests, when retreating to his collection of snails, and when he is spending time with his daughter Trixie. Affleck’s Vic contrasts with Ana de Armas’ unpredictable and emotional Melinda, a character full of ambiguity. But, in the end, however great their performances may be, it is hard to sympathize with either of these characters, and therefore, to even care about what happens in their marriage.

Highsmith’s novel had a previous cinematic adaptation. French movie, Eaux Profondes (1981), directed by Michel Deville, and starring young Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert, a much more intriguing adaptation, full of tension.