DIRECTORS/SCREENWRITERS
Scott
McGehee
David Siegel
based
on the novel The Blank Wall by
Elisabeth
Sanxay Holding
PRODUCERS
Scott McGehee
David Siegel
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Giles Nuttgens
MUSIC
Peter Nashel
EDITOR
Lauren Zuckerman
CAST
Tilda Swinton (Margaret Hall)
Goran Visnjic (Alek Spera)
Jonathan Tucker (Beau Hall)
Peter Donat (Jack Hall)
Josh Lucas (Darby Reese)
Raymond Barry (Carlie Nagel)
Tamara Hope (Paige Hall)
Jordan Dorrance (Dylan Hall)
Holmes Osborne (Loan Officer)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 100m
U.S. release: August 8, 2001
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
|
Almost the entirety of The
Deep End focuses precisely and a little obsessively on one
event: the concealment of a corpse, and the aftermath. It's all
"What a tangled web we weave." What sets the movie
apart is the dynamic between the lead character, Margaret Hall
(Tilda Swinton), and her son Beau (Jonathan Tucker), a musician
in his late teens. Beau is gay, and has been hanging around the
sort of predatory older men that make a mother nervous; you feel
Margaret would be okay with his sexuality if he practiced it
more prudently. As the movie begins, communication between the
two is already at a standstill: he resents her questions, and
she, not wanting to push the boy away, tries hard not to ask
them.
All of this is fertile ground
for either a thriller or a drama; The Deep End, written
and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, attempts to be
both. One of Beau's mates, a sleazy loverboy (Josh Lucas), turns
up dead on the shore one morning. Margaret, assuming that Beau
killed his lover during an argument, takes the body far away
and anchors it down in shallow water (probably about 10 feet).
The film slows down so that we process every step, every awkward
development. For long stretches there's no sound except the soothing
waves lapping the shore. Each lap seems to drive the reality
of the situation home a little deeper.
The Deep End is a tasteful and accomplished work,
respectful of details and ornamented with a heroic performance
by Tilda Swinton, whose Margaret has to get on with mundane daily
life despite this incident and often seems close to cracking.
You almost want to hear no more about the corpse -- you want
the movie to become about how Margaret and Beau will now interact,
circling each other warily to see what the other knows, and we
do get a bit of that. But their failure to communicate serves
only to explain why certain things aren't said at certain points,
and there are a few too many scenes that bring interruptions
at the worst time.
The corpse is recovered, and
Margaret must now deal with a new wrinkle: a mysterious man,
Alek (Goran Visnjic), seems to know a lot about the relationship
between Beau and the dead man, and he wants an impressive sum
of money in exchange for staying quiet. Alek is not what he seems,
though, and in the person of ER hunk Visnjic he seems
to come off as a heavy only as a formality; the women in the
audience may hope for, and probably expect, a change of heart.
Margaret sets about scraping
the money together, and we have to watch her do that for
a few scenes. Other things happen, further complicating Margaret's
agenda -- the movie could be called Bad Timing. The plot
-- based as it is on a novel (Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The
Blank Wall) over 50 years old -- begins to creak. The writers-directors
get as much mileage as they can out of the curving roads and
placid waters of Lake Tahoe, around which the action is set.
Swinton gives us a harried, unglamorous woman until a key scene
near the end, when Margaret finally puts on some makeup -- possibly
to appear more attractive to Alek -- and nearly pops out at us
(she's even wearing a red overcoat).
The denouement is perhaps best
not discussed, and not only to avoid spoilers. A second heavy
(Raymond Barry), one of those looming foulmouths you expect to
meet in movies less classy than this, enters the picture and
brings a stale waft of B-movie air with him; for a while, the
movie plays "Good Cop/Bad Cop" (it's never clear whether
the men are corrupt detectives or not). The climax slides
into cheese -- tactfully directed cheese is still cheese. The
Deep End is finely crafted but more than a little overrated,
perhaps understandable at the end of such a summer as the one
we've just had. Critics may be eager for any movie that gestures
even slightly towards autumn's promise of adulthood. See it for
Tilda Swinton, and for the quietly accusatory sound of the waves
flirting with the shore and retreating.
|
