![]() So this is a thriller that is largely about male jealousy and what it might lead to. What director Adrian Lyne and his writers Zach Helm and Sam Levinson seem to have done to compensate for this is to make the Vic-Melinda relationship more sexually charged, with much of that current coming from the arrangement between them: Vic is often an inexpressive, unemotional fellow, but he is most turned on by his wife, becomes most alive and passionate, when he sees or imagines her in sexual situations with other men. What was transgressive, dangerous or at least very uncommon in small-town America in the 1950s – an open marriage and its effect on a community – is much less so today, and this blunts the edge of the main situation. So Deep Water should not be judged on how closely it adheres to its source material.īut this point has to be made: by moving the story to the present day, the film inevitably changes the way we look at its characters and their situation. While many of Highsmith’s writings have been adapted for the screen, it is not the case that the adaptations are always faithful: arguably the most well-known film based on a Highsmith book, Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, made a crucial alteration in the plot of the book, allowing the leading man to retain his moral compass in keeping with the pressures of studio-era Hollywood. On the one hand, they have been together for years, they have a child, the family appears stable, and they seem to socialise often with a common group of friends.īut around halfway through, as the ambiguity of the early scenes is lost, and we get a clearer sense of what exactly is happening, the film also becomes more predictable, and refuses to gather steam as a thriller. ĭeep Water centres on the relationship between Vic and Melinda, with their interactions making it obvious that there is something off, or unconventional, about their marriage. I have not read Highsmith’s 1957 novel Deep Water, but I had no trouble identifying her touch in the broad outlines of the new film by that name – even if the story has been modernised and altered. He was aware that he didn’t want to go back to work, didn’t want to do anything.” ![]() ” Or this from The Breeder, where a man finds himself with 17 children after barely a decade of marriage: “He was just sane enough to realise that his mind, so to speak, was gone. ![]() Even in the more lighthearted Highsmith stories about husbands and wives, you learn not to bat an eyelid when you come across a passage like this: “Sarah’s idea was to kill Sylvester with good food, with kindness, with wifely duty. Blind movie review: Sonam Kapoor Ahuja's thriller barely manages to thrill Satyaprem Ki Katha: Kartik Aaryan & Kiara Advani shine in a love story with a social messageįor instance, in the chilling When the Fleet was in at Mobile, a diffident woman escapes her bullying husband after administering him a dose of chloroform – but finds that it is not so easy to return to a happy past. ![]()
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