DEEP WATER REVIEWS MOVIE

De Armas, on the other hand, plays Melinda like she’s on a telenovela.Ĭo-written by Euphoria’s Sam Levinson, Deep Water just throws you into the… deep end with these two, with little explanation for how they got there. It doesn’t help that Vic is a man who moves at his own pace, and in a truly baffling character quirk, breeds snails. The performances otherwise, particularly Affleck’s, are almost imperceptible. It’s also the only moment that comes across as spontaneous in a film that is too studied for its own good. Stranger still, it’s practically the only time that Affleck cracks a smile in the entire movie-he’d been going for a ‘stuck in a traffic jam’ look the whole time, you see. A second ago, they were biting each other’s lips.

There’s a quick moment late in the film when Affleck, in the throes of wild passion, pauses for a moment and giggles.

DEEP WATER REVIEWS MOVIE

But the movie always maintains an air of mystery about him and Melinda. Is he a jilted lover? Is he a psychotic murderer? Or is Vic, who we’re told retired after inventing a chip that powers military drones, a giant metaphor for American foreign policy? He is, after all, untouchable, despite his many outward acts of aggression. He meant it only as a joke, but before long, we see Vic killing Melinda’s boyfriends willy nilly. This is one of the many ways in which the movie disrespects Melinda it even has the gall to have some of Vic’s friends cast aspersions on her character.ĭetermined to appear stoic and aloof, Vic corners one of Melinda’s dates one evening, and strongly implies that he killed the last man who got close with her. But you’d never be able to tell if Vic and Melinda ever spoke about it, going by his jealous behaviour every time he sees her openly flirting with a revolving door of young men. Vic and Melinda are in an open marriage, which sounds like a thing you’d enter into only after having had a nice chat about it with your equally adventurous partner. Even if, like Affleck, they were dating her while filming. Here’s an actress whose co-stars will never be able to match the natural chemistry that she has with the camera. Lyne even went so far as to hire cinematographer Eigil Bryld, who worked with Fincher on his House of Cards episodes.Įnigmatic to a fault, choppily edited and peppered with bouts of broad comedy that’ll make you go ‘huh’, Deep Water tells the story of the phenomenally named Vic and his visibly younger trophy wife Melinda, played by de Armas. It was his awkward real-life relationship with the media that convinced David Fincher to cast him in Gone Girl, which I’d imagine is the kind of psychosexual thriller that Deep Water wants to be.

Deep water reviews