Can a snail be sexy?
How about a bridge?
Patricia Highsmith’s original novel about a murderous marital crisis came out in 1957.
Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck in ‘Deep Water’.Claire Folger/20th Century Studios
That’s 65 years of evolving relationship dynamics to grapple with.
It’s also a goof, with an odd charm wildly at odds with the leaden melodrama.
This train wreck gawks at itself.
Affleck and de Armas play the unhappily married Van Allens.
Mostly, he bikes around and takes care of their precocious daughter, Trixie (Grace Jenkins).
Melinda stays busy getting busy.
Her affairs with various hot young dudes are not subtle.
Vic calmly mentions another “friend” of Melinda’s who recently disappeared and strongly implies thathedid the disappearing.
Is Vic killing Melinda’s boyfriends?
Everyone assumes his confession is a joke.
Melinda thinks he’s too boring for that kind of excitement.
Melinda’s accelerating promiscuity should torment him, but it mainly exists as gossip for their social circle.
That includes local writer Don Wilson (Tracy Letts), who takes an interest in the murder rumors.
Now we’re getting to the good stuff.
But his low-key comic energy pulls the torpid romantic plot in a more self-aware direction.
He seems like a regular person who just wandered into a softcore noir; his double takes are quadruple.
Meanwhile, de Armas does all the acting Affleck doesn’t.
It’s a sing-on-the-piano, third-base-on-the-dance-floor kind of performance.
“America’s so suffocating!”
she declares, after Vic begs her not to drunkenly disrobe in front of their horrified babysitter.
Still, it lacks the sizzle of Lyne’s earlier films.
Do we laugh more at sex scenes now?
Or arethesesex scenes just funny?
(Prepare yourself for the biting.)
The silliness may also come from adapting Highsmith’s tale into modern times.
Melinda is supposed to feel trapped by Vic, but that doesn’t read anymore.
That 2002 film is Lyne’s masterwork, embedding all his gaudy stimulations in rueful yearning.
By comparison,Deep Waterstays shallow.
Vic has pet snails and gang, this man really cares about his snails.
(Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that someone brings a cute puppy to a murder.
I wouldn’t marry it, but I wouldn’t kill it.
Remind me, what’s the third option?C+
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