With Deep Water, Adrian Lyne resuscitates the erotic thriller as contemplative, campy fun
The director of 9 1/2 Weeks and Indecent Proposal paints a portrait of a sexually charged, unconventional marriage
Film Reviews Deep Water
It’s hard to overstate how important Adrian Lyne was in bringing a libidinous edge to mainstream moviemaking in the 1980s. Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat may have codified onscreen sex (not to mention the “erotic thriller” template) for normies in 1981, but Lyne’s Flashdance, 9 ½ Weeks, and Fatal Attraction were important cultural flash points that not only attracted audiences in droves but inspired a host of imitators of their grown-up content and muscular visual language. Deep Water comes 20 years after his previous work, the soapy, acclaimed Unfaithful, and it shepherds a sadly ailing cinematic tradition forward with the same luminous style, a welcome sensuality, and in an era in which pornography is more widely available than ever before, an astute bit of camp.
An adaptation of the 1957 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, Lyne’s latest revisits some of the erotic highlights from those earlier works and updates them in a more appropriate (and egalitarian) context. Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, both terrific in their roles, play the couple around whom the film’s meditation on modern sexual relationships revolves, while Lyne proves not only that he can film hot scenes unlike almost anyone in the business, but inject them with a psychological sophistication that complicates their (and our) postcoital bliss.
Affleck and de Armas, whose reported fling during production (whether true or not) gives their scenes an additional charge, play Vic and Melinda Van Allen. Vic is a man of leisure after retiring early from inventing a microchip that allows military drones to execute their targets remotely, and Melinda is his philandering wife. Although any sort of formal arrangement between them goes unspoken, they have settled into an unconventional routine to keep their marriage interesting, if not always functional: she takes a series of lovers while he navigates simultaneous pangs of jealousy and attraction from a spectator’s distance.
Vic’s friends Nash (Lil Rel Howery), Evelyn (Jade Fernandez), and Arthur (Dash Mihok) warn him about her cheating, but he waves it off, even as he witnesses the evidence firsthand. But when Vic jokes with Joel (Brendan Miller), one of Melinda’s current lovers, about killing one of his predecessors, some of the people in their social circle begin to speculate about whether or not Vic actually committed murder.
Somewhat predictably, Vic and Melinda’s cycle of adultery, covetousness and reconciliation escalates as they become more tethered to the underpinnings of the dynamic they have created. Vic becomes increasingly desperate to keep Melinda to and for himself, while Melinda yearns for the freedom and irresponsibility of casual sex. But after another of Melinda’s lovers dies at a party that she and Vic are attending, she starts to wonder if there’s some truth to his gallows-humor joke about her late friend. Before long, they become locked in a volatile battle of wills that sometimes subsides into more cheerful domesticity and other times prompts threats of divorce and retaliation, leaving the couple to decide if this arrangement is a salve to stave off boredom in their marriage or a time bomb threatening to blow it up.
The superficial question to be answered in a film like this, rare as they are these days, is whether or not what these two people (and their potential outside partners) are doing is sexy — and it is. Lyne doesn’t shoot the sex scenes in smoke-filled hallways set to saxophone solos like he once did, but he vividly captures the clumsy urgency of attraction and the more granular gestures that connect and entice lovers. What’s actually more important in Deep Water is not that we find their relationship sexy but whether or not we understand it, and for better or worse, the filmmaker communicates each character’s perspective clearly and compellingly. Lyne’s latest evokes David Cronenberg’s Crash and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, the latter less explicit than the former, but the key to unlocking both is whether or not you can accept that this dynamic, dysfunctional, fucked-up or distasteful as it may be, works for these characters.
Notwithstanding the rise of the cuckold as a cultural (and pornographic) trope, it at least seems like most relationships where there is so much secrecy and jealousy involved could not weather the back and forth that Vic and Melinda endure; even though parenting their daughter Trixie (Grace Jenkins) ostensibly gives them a reason to “work things out” at the end of each affair, you’d think everything that leads up to that resolution would cause much more damage than papered-over apologies could repair. But just like a man dressing up as a bat, this is a conceit you sort of have to just accept without bringing to it your own choices or judgment. Lyne, working from a script by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, at the very least makes us get what works about it for each of them.
What’s kind of great about the film is the way not only their relationship escalates, but how it does so in a small, tight-knit community that both feels like a clichéd version of local pals and busybodies, and also somewhat accurately follows the speculation that might emerge after a series of deaths linked (whether or not they’re actually related) to a marriage that many people are aware is troubled. Consequently, audiences watch Vic and Melinda battle each other, and themselves, and those viewers are then tasked with the responsibility of deciding what they can relate to — the jealousy, forgiveness, suspicion, empathy, and consternation as they watch two characters that are anything but conventionally appealing.
Ultimately, given that escalation it’s pretty tough not to watch this film at least a little bit through a campy filter (and that’s putting it mildly); Tracy Letts’ turn as a self-important novelist and amateur sleuth who begins investigating Vic lends the cat-and-mouse game between Melinda and her husband a delightful if occasionally silly edge, more Tom and Jerry than predator and prey. But where Lyne’s ’80s and ’90s films functioned as sexy outliers, cautionary tales or commentaries on zeitgeist issues, this one uniquely seems at least interested in examining whether or not a relationship like this can endure, much less exist.
That feels especially true at a moment when the very notion of a conventional relationship is kind of outdated; what works for the two (or more) people in the situation is what matters, not how that dynamic appears to the individuals and the world around them. Of course, that may also make the marriage depicted here an outlier or a cautionary tale. As for Lyne and his legacy, don’t call Deep Water a comeback: whether you’re turned on, thinking hard or trying not to laugh, he’s just as good at getting people talking about sex—and everything around it—as he ever was. Let the pillow talk begin.
78 Comments
With all of the delay’s and whatnot this thing has gone through I was expecting a D, so this is good news.
You want the D?
As a young man growing up in the 80’s, this director’s body of work was a mainstay of young male hood late night, um, watching. I want to be turned on so badly by this new flick, but dammit: Ben Affleck.
I’m kinda surprised because, outside of 9 1/2 Weeks (which is basically a fancy Zalman King movie), most of his films were thinner on the nudity than what else might be showing up on late night HBO/Showtime. Also, you let Mickey Rourke turn your crank but got a thing about Affleck? To each their own.
Original face Rourke? Hell, yes!
Yep. Before he disfigured himself, Rourke was absolutely beautiful. I was a bit too young to see 9 1/2 weeks when it came out but I remember my Mom and my aunts going on about how ridiculously good-looking he was. I still can’t watch the Jared Leto scenes in Fight Club without thinking of Rourke and “destroying something beautiful,” which he willingly did to himself.
I regret nothing.
Rourke was a sexy fella before the ‘roids and the punches to the head transformed him into something less handsome.But I think you’re right on the rest of it. Even in 9 1/2 Weeks, IIRC, most of the nudity is because the Rourke character is into sex clubs and sex workers, not so much from the central relationship with Basinger. The emphasis is less the camera ogling nude actresses for the audience’s wanking benefit, and more on Basinger’s reaction to this world unsuppressed sexuality, so the camera frequently kind of darts away from the nudity, as if it’s as alternately turned on and freaked out by some of these displays as Basinger’s character is supposed to be. But in movies like Unfaithful and Fatal Attraction, Lynne really packs in a lot of sex without a lot of skin.
Remember Angel Heart? Rourke was in that one. Lisa Bonet FTW!!!
Impossible to forget Angel Heart. The press in the run up to the movies was that we would see a different side to Lisa Bonet, and yeah..we got to see a lot of different sides of her that we hadn’t seen before.
Ana De Armas is more than sexy enough to compensate for any issues you have with Affleck, surely.
Yeah, you’d think, but Jesus, Ben Affleck like some sort of protostar black hole that can suck the good right out of the room.
I disagree. Ah well, just more sexy Ana De Armas for me.
Yep.
He’s only 16 years older than her!
> He’s only 16 years older than her!
Huh
TIL Ama de Armas is significantly older than me.
I’m honestly surprised by that. She seems perpetually 27. And is one of the most attractive women on the face of the earth, even when playing a distasteful character like Melinda.
Younger people may not realize what Kathleen Turner did to us young men in Body Heat. Good lord and it’s why I loved the Romancing the Stone movies.
What’s funny is that 9 1/2 Weeks wasn’t so much as mentioned in previous articles about this movie. Given that it was pretty much pure softcore, seems like a glaring omission.
Breathing through your mouth with dead eyes can be a turn on – for some people.
Can you say that with an accent?
Dad?
I want to be turned on so badly by this new flick, but dammit: Ben Affleck.
Affleck is pretty great in this actually
I was wondering about him being the goober in the mix…and your comment confirmed my suspicions.
Honestly kind of shocked y’all gave this a good review. It’s not getting good notices at all elsewhere.
Might all depend on how horny the reviewer is feeling when they review it.
In the same vein as ,” never go food shopping when you’re hungry ”,…never review an erotic thriller when you’re horny..
It’s got a 60 percent on Metacritic right now. That’s probably a bit less favorable than the B Gilchrist gives it, but doesn’t suggest he’s markedly out of step with what other critics think. It does feel like recent articles here are kind of combining reviews with analysis that’s separate from whether the movie is good. Here, we get a lot of discussion of the career of Adrian Lyne and the history of the erotic thriller, none of which is bad, per se, but it doesn’t seem really to answer the question of whether this particular movie is worth seeing.
I at least know the basic beats of what this movie is about, unlike say Turning Red.
I was at a poker game other night wherein 7 men between ages 23-75 sat around grumpy and grumbling about “I don’t need to hear that” and complaining about inappropriate messages and metaphors and their daughters and all, and I told them (I’ve got 8&16 YR old daughters) “guys, I think it’s interesting that my children can handle this concept, but YOU 7 are having pearl clutching fainting episodes over the fact that girls have periods. “ like, that’s not an unknown thing, guys, straighten up and man up (pun intended).Sseriously my 8 year old was more tactful, interested and educated on the concept than the 7 of em put together.
Avclub main demographic is cuckolds, so it works.
I’d say it’s getting a pretty mixed (with a slight edge towards the positive) reaction, actually, though this is pretty generous. I don’t care—I love the novel (which this probably has little to do with), and have a sick love since my teen years for erotic thrillers—good and bad.
(Though I always think Dressed to Kill started the genre…)
Nothing DePalma has ever done is anything other than a reimagining of something that came before it.
Yeah, yeah, that’s the standard rhetoric about him, and it has some truth but as much as Dressed to Kill riffed on Psycho it added other elements (yes, taken from other genres) to create, for good or bad, its own thing. (And scenes like the art gallery stalking scene at least show genuine craft and aren’t just a copy/paste of something Hitch or someone else did). Anyway it’s not like erotic thrillers are an original genre—Body Heat which this article says started the genre was an attempt to make a modern film noir.
Oh, I won’t argue that Dressed to Kill (and Body Heat – and maybe Cruising) kicked off the 80s Golden Age. And I won’t argue that DePalma isn’t/wasn’t technically gifted – but I will die on the hill that DePalma is a master of pastiche first, filmmaking second.
And of course at one point DePalma was going to make a Cruising adaptation (the Friedkin film has barely anything directly to do with the novel anyway) AND claims he worked out the Dressed to Kill gallery scene his Cruising, where it was obviously going to be between two men.
At any rate, I can’t really disagree with anything you say, even if I like DePalma more than you do. But yeah–Dressed to Kill just strikes me as the start of a lot of erotic thriller tropes–including dressing them up with recognizable stars and decent budgets to give them a veneer of somehow being classy “mature” entertainment.
I dunno, I think one could argue he at least perfected the 80’s erotic thriller with Body Double, which while a pastiche/parody of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, is also a fucking batshit masterpiece and far funnier and weirder than any other film in that genre in that decade
I completely agree. And RIP William Hurt, who could subtly do “batshit” without even slightly losing his composure.
I love William Hurt, RIP, but you’re thinking of Body Heat, not Body Double. But if you love batshit, you’re in for a treat
I enjoyed it—it knows what it is and delivers on that 100%. So long as the viewer understands what he’s getting ready to watch and has adequate expectations it’s hard for me to imagine being disappointed with it.
I wasn’t expecting much, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this after giving it a go Sunday morning. It’s very, very silly and I don’t think it’s saying anything particularly incisive about marriage, but it’s the type of campy cat-and-mouse thriller that doesn’t get made anymore. The kind you don’t mind sitting through when it turns up on cable. Also, it’s very well-shot! And the New Orleans setting is a nice change of scenery from whatever Vancouver/Atlanta backlot is usually on screen.
cannot believe lil rel howery is also in this. give this man the nobel prize for time management.
I feel like “Lil Rel Howery’s Time Management” would be a killer special.
Has anyone other than homely men born before women wore pants ever written/directed an ‘erotic thriller’?
There may be exactly one, depending how you define “erotic,” how you define “thriller,” and how old the guy who made “The Room” is.
At least we all agree on how to define “pants.” I think.
Jennifer Lynch directed the most batshit insane erotic thriller ever: Boxing Helena.
“Look Dad! No talent!”
You have to leave it to French for that one.
Well someone’s got to, and I don’t see any gosh-darned Millennials with their iPads and pink dyed hair stepping up to the plate.
I would imagine it was the easy availability of seeing people wearing no pants or anything else on the internet that put an end to the erotic thriller.
Clare Denis
… and Catherine Breillat, Jennifer Lynch, Katherine Bigelow, Jane Campion, etc. But sure, it’s fun to type stuff.The Amish look at Millennials and say, “What a bunch of boring uptight prudes.”
yo, quit all the audible eyerolls, shit’s gross
I’m just going to cut to the chase here and ask if this is worth checking out on PornHub
I hear there’s this guy who does calculus lectures on there too!
Don’t forget the most wholesome guy of all. Ryan Creamer (His name has a Creamer on it!)
Given the setup, I assume this movie ends with a drone using the Affleck-chip killing Tracy Letts?
Given what the film’s about, I’m surprised it didn’t get a D.Eh?Eh? *Wiggles eyebrows*
Daaaaaaad, you’re embarrassing us.
all the chicks get nude in affleck movies, charlize theron, ratakajowski, and now ana de armas (i’m sure). hollywood been looking to make a name for her ever since knives out
“That feels especially true at a moment when the very notion of a conventional relationship is kind of outdated”I’d say a conventional relationship is still very much the norm. And even if more unconventional relationships are more accepted or mainstream, I’d say most still at least out up the front of being conventional.
you’re forgetting how erotic and unconventional the world of Todd Gilchrist is.
yeah, maybe it’s all throuples and sex parties in Todd’s world but ‘conventional relationships’ still seem dominant in most of the world.
I guess I am officially an old because everyone that I know who is in a relationship is in a conventional relationship so this seems to me like it comes from Mars
I now want a comedy bit in a movie where Ben Affleck plays himself, and whichever woman he is with insists that he dresses up like Batman for sex.
I bet Keaton got so much action with that suit.
It was my understanding he could barely move in it, so he might have gotten action done to him, but I don’t think he was able to do more than stand there (or lie there I suppose)
I’d rather watch parmesan be erotic than Ben Affleck
When is parmesan ever NOT erotic? [smells parmesan dust on fingers, hides into his bunk.]
normies
OK, Todd, you did some butt stuff. Good job.
The big question here is whether they cover up Affleck’s gigantic back tattoo.
Awkwardly
I wish I could stand watching Ben Affleck try to act.
I remember the german TV-version from 1983. I must have been 13 years old and developed a crush on actress Constanze Engelbrecht.
And there’s the first adaptation with Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant:
retiring early from inventing a microchip that allows military drones to execute their targets remotelywait what