Sad Affleck gets his revenge in Hulu’s erotic thriller throwback Deep Water

Sad Affleck gets his revenge in Hulu’s erotic thriller throwback Deep Water

There’s Something Pleasantly Unsavory About Adrian Lyne’s Twisted Domestic Drama deep waters – a trashy, tabloid scandal that is almost quaint. It’s the first film in 20 years from Lyne, who ruled the erotic thriller genre of the 80s and 90s with a string of scorching hits like Fatal attraction and Indecent Proposal. The film, which comes direct to Hulu on March 18, stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who began a headline-grabbing romance on set, but broke up long before the film’s producers delayed. the pandemic cannot launch an advertising campaign around them. Even the manner of his exit carries a whiff of opprobrium, of something illicit. Disney, which acquired the film when it bought 20th Century Fox, delayed it twice before pulling its theatrical release altogether, ultimately handing it over to Hulu (and Amazon, for an international release) in almost disgust. tangible. Could he be so evil, so out of step with the times, or just so bad?
“Not really” is the answer to all three questions. True to Lyne form, deep waters is a slick and entertaining cod psychological thriller that’s just classy enough to be ambitious and just seedy enough to satisfy a craving for cinematic junk food. And while its fate may seem ignominious for a film once perceived, at least by its producers, as a prestige production, they were clearly fishing for another missing girl – it’s a perfect prospect for a Friday night with a bucket-sized glass of wine.

Photo: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios
deep waters is based on the classic 1957 novel by The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith at her sour, misanthropic best. Highsmith loved nothing more than pinpointing, with sadistic precision, the frustrated and dark desires of the suburban American male. The filmmakers’ unlikely stroke of genius was realizing that the perfect modern subject for one of its chilling studies of emasculation would be Ben Affleck.
Affleck plays Vic Van Allen, a wealthy slacker who retreated to posh suburban New Orleans on the loot of a chip he designed for combat drones. He rides a bike, edits a quarterly on the arts of vanity, dotes on his bubbly 6-year-old daughter, Trixie, and raises snails in his garage. He also tolerates his wife Melinda (de Armas), a feisty lush who conducts cheeky affairs with handsome, headstrong young men right under Vic’s nose, flaunting them at social events and even inviting them to awkward dinner parties. Vic’s friends view his indulgence with a mixture of admiration, pity, and frustration. What holds him back is the central mystery of the story; if and when it cracks, that’s what drives the suspense.
Vic is a strange character. He seems to wander through his life in a daze, but he’s not really passive. He always seems to be in control – maybe too much control. He only comes fully to life when talking to Trixie or gazing in wet adoration at her snails, scenes Lyne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld shoot with an alien glow. (The snails are a wonderfully weird and unsettling touch of Highsmith; Lyne said the studio was eager to cut them, but rightly insisted on keeping them.)

Photo: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios
Affleck’s performance is brilliantly modulated. Most of the time, he inhabits Vic with terrible inertia, only heightened by his physical size. While he appears darkly in frame, even his stubble looks depressed, it may seem like the performance is a self-conscious parody of the Sad Affleck meme. But there are also times when he shows a creepy thumb of steel. A former boyfriend of Melinda’s has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and early in the film, Vic scares her latest boyfriend by claiming to have killed him. Affleck’s repressed and hyper-controlled rage makes it all too believable. He keeps Vic deliberately unreadable, up to and even beyond the pool party that brings things to a head in the middle of the film.
With Melinda, Vic is something else again. In Highsmith’s novel, their marriage is bitter and loveless, but that’s not Lyne’s kind of wickedness. Thus, in the film, the cycle of jealousy and provocation of the couple receives a perverse sexual charge. De Armas is an intensely charismatic performer; think how lovely she was in Knives outor the speed and elegance with which she stole all of no time to die, and imagine all that energy channeled into a feature-length firework of messy sexuality. She may have overwhelmed such an overpowered Affleck, but it feels more like an encounter between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. The power dynamic is not as one-sided as it seems. Vic’s refusal to let Melinda go after him is another kind of control, and Lyne, dirtier than ever, suggests he might get a kick out of it — or they might all of them.
Not that deep waters is truly a work of profound psychological complexity. Lyne picked up where he left off with 2002 Unfaithful (the one where Diane Lane thinks about sex on a train). It’s almost shocking how serene his work has been for 20 years in the desert, failing to get any projects green.

Image: 20th Century Studios
During this interval, its themes, cinematic style, and gender politics (to the extent that it has any) have completely gone out of fashion. His films have an air of sophistication, thanks to genuinely excellent performances and solid scripts (in deep waters‘s case, by Zach Helm and Euphoria showrunner Sam Levinson), and he’s up there with Ridley and Tony Scott as one of the most influential visual stylists of his generation. Its mix of lavish real estate porn and sultry, backlit close-ups has done so much to define what the past three and a half decades of film and television drama look like. But his Hitchcockian overtones are broad, his instincts pulpy, and for the most part, he makes shameless potboilers that smear everything on the surface. deep waters is no different.
That’s why it doesn’t really hurt the movie that it gets a bit silly as it reaches its climax. It’s a nostalgic pleasure to watch a starry, elevated piece of hokum like this go to the jugular. Lyne cleverly places playwright and great actress Tracy Letts in the modest but key role of a local writer who believes Vic’s line about the murder of one of Melinda’s boyfriends, and brings her suspicions to their logical conclusion. Letts’ simmering envy and vanity add a nice flavor to the curdled melodrama, while Highsmith’s decision to alter Highsmith’s grim conclusion works surprisingly well.
But the film belongs to de Armas and Affleck. In particular Affleck, who, in performances as varied as this one and his thundering role in The last duel, shows not only his reach and resourcefulness as an actor, but also a devious gift for manipulating his own image. Sad Affleck is a relatable avatar of a disgruntled and helpless middle age, clinging to defeat from the jaws of privilege and success. deep waters gives us the thrill by proxy to see him let go of everything.
deep waters will begin streaming on Hulu on March 18.

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#Sad #Affleck #revenge #Hulus #erotic #thriller #throwback #Deep #Water

Sad Affleck gets his revenge in Hulu’s erotic thriller throwback Deep Water

There’s Something Pleasantly Unsavory About Adrian Lyne’s Twisted Domestic Drama deep waters – a trashy, tabloid scandal that is almost quaint. It’s the first film in 20 years from Lyne, who ruled the erotic thriller genre of the 80s and 90s with a string of scorching hits like Fatal attraction and Indecent Proposal. The film, which comes direct to Hulu on March 18, stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who began a headline-grabbing romance on set, but broke up long before the film’s producers delayed. the pandemic cannot launch an advertising campaign around them. Even the manner of his exit carries a whiff of opprobrium, of something illicit. Disney, which acquired the film when it bought 20th Century Fox, delayed it twice before pulling its theatrical release altogether, ultimately handing it over to Hulu (and Amazon, for an international release) in almost disgust. tangible. Could he be so evil, so out of step with the times, or just so bad?
“Not really” is the answer to all three questions. True to Lyne form, deep waters is a slick and entertaining cod psychological thriller that’s just classy enough to be ambitious and just seedy enough to satisfy a craving for cinematic junk food. And while its fate may seem ignominious for a film once perceived, at least by its producers, as a prestige production, they were clearly fishing for another missing girl – it’s a perfect prospect for a Friday night with a bucket-sized glass of wine.

Photo: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios
deep waters is based on the classic 1957 novel by The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith at her sour, misanthropic best. Highsmith loved nothing more than pinpointing, with sadistic precision, the frustrated and dark desires of the suburban American male. The filmmakers’ unlikely stroke of genius was realizing that the perfect modern subject for one of its chilling studies of emasculation would be Ben Affleck.
Affleck plays Vic Van Allen, a wealthy slacker who retreated to posh suburban New Orleans on the loot of a chip he designed for combat drones. He rides a bike, edits a quarterly on the arts of vanity, dotes on his bubbly 6-year-old daughter, Trixie, and raises snails in his garage. He also tolerates his wife Melinda (de Armas), a feisty lush who conducts cheeky affairs with handsome, headstrong young men right under Vic’s nose, flaunting them at social events and even inviting them to awkward dinner parties. Vic’s friends view his indulgence with a mixture of admiration, pity, and frustration. What holds him back is the central mystery of the story; if and when it cracks, that’s what drives the suspense.
Vic is a strange character. He seems to wander through his life in a daze, but he’s not really passive. He always seems to be in control – maybe too much control. He only comes fully to life when talking to Trixie or gazing in wet adoration at her snails, scenes Lyne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld shoot with an alien glow. (The snails are a wonderfully weird and unsettling touch of Highsmith; Lyne said the studio was eager to cut them, but rightly insisted on keeping them.)

Photo: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios
Affleck’s performance is brilliantly modulated. Most of the time, he inhabits Vic with terrible inertia, only heightened by his physical size. While he appears darkly in frame, even his stubble looks depressed, it may seem like the performance is a self-conscious parody of the Sad Affleck meme. But there are also times when he shows a creepy thumb of steel. A former boyfriend of Melinda’s has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and early in the film, Vic scares her latest boyfriend by claiming to have killed him. Affleck’s repressed and hyper-controlled rage makes it all too believable. He keeps Vic deliberately unreadable, up to and even beyond the pool party that brings things to a head in the middle of the film.
With Melinda, Vic is something else again. In Highsmith’s novel, their marriage is bitter and loveless, but that’s not Lyne’s kind of wickedness. Thus, in the film, the cycle of jealousy and provocation of the couple receives a perverse sexual charge. De Armas is an intensely charismatic performer; think how lovely she was in Knives outor the speed and elegance with which she stole all of no time to die, and imagine all that energy channeled into a feature-length firework of messy sexuality. She may have overwhelmed such an overpowered Affleck, but it feels more like an encounter between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. The power dynamic is not as one-sided as it seems. Vic’s refusal to let Melinda go after him is another kind of control, and Lyne, dirtier than ever, suggests he might get a kick out of it — or they might all of them.
Not that deep waters is truly a work of profound psychological complexity. Lyne picked up where he left off with 2002 Unfaithful (the one where Diane Lane thinks about sex on a train). It’s almost shocking how serene his work has been for 20 years in the desert, failing to get any projects green.

Image: 20th Century Studios
During this interval, its themes, cinematic style, and gender politics (to the extent that it has any) have completely gone out of fashion. His films have an air of sophistication, thanks to genuinely excellent performances and solid scripts (in deep waters‘s case, by Zach Helm and Euphoria showrunner Sam Levinson), and he’s up there with Ridley and Tony Scott as one of the most influential visual stylists of his generation. Its mix of lavish real estate porn and sultry, backlit close-ups has done so much to define what the past three and a half decades of film and television drama look like. But his Hitchcockian overtones are broad, his instincts pulpy, and for the most part, he makes shameless potboilers that smear everything on the surface. deep waters is no different.
That’s why it doesn’t really hurt the movie that it gets a bit silly as it reaches its climax. It’s a nostalgic pleasure to watch a starry, elevated piece of hokum like this go to the jugular. Lyne cleverly places playwright and great actress Tracy Letts in the modest but key role of a local writer who believes Vic’s line about the murder of one of Melinda’s boyfriends, and brings her suspicions to their logical conclusion. Letts’ simmering envy and vanity add a nice flavor to the curdled melodrama, while Highsmith’s decision to alter Highsmith’s grim conclusion works surprisingly well.
But the film belongs to de Armas and Affleck. In particular Affleck, who, in performances as varied as this one and his thundering role in The last duel, shows not only his reach and resourcefulness as an actor, but also a devious gift for manipulating his own image. Sad Affleck is a relatable avatar of a disgruntled and helpless middle age, clinging to defeat from the jaws of privilege and success. deep waters gives us the thrill by proxy to see him let go of everything.
deep waters will begin streaming on Hulu on March 18.

Register to receive the newsletter
Patch NotesA weekly roundup of Polygon’s best stuff

One more thing!
Please check your email to find a confirmation email and follow the steps to confirm your humanity.

E-mail (mandatory)

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European Users agree to the Data Transfer Policy.
Subscribe

#Sad #Affleck #revenge #Hulus #erotic #thriller #throwback #Deep #Water