Thicker Than Water

by Sasha Stone

The best films this year have been the indie thrillers, a genre that produced Memento and Sexy Beast. The best of these, and perhaps among the best of year, is The Deep End, inspired by Max Ophuls' 1949 film The Reckless Moment, and adapted from the Elizabeth Sanxay Holding novel "The Blank Wall" by collaborative writers, producers, and directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel.

The last film the two made together was Suture, which failed to make its mark seven years ago but showcased the duo's obvious talents to the five of us who saw it. Unlike Suture, The Deep End has its roots in melodrama and noir with a few plot twists that make for a thoroughly modern makeover of a very traditional theme.

The story unfolds after the devoted and very busy mother Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) discovers the body of her son's dead lover, an irresistible sleazebag named Darby (Josh Lucas). Assuming her son killed him after a fight, she quickly sets to the task of covering up the murder to protect her son. Here is a mother who would have no problem lifting a car to save her baby.

If she wasn't too afraid to order Darby to stay away from her 17 year-old son Beau (Jonathan Tucker) she most certainly won't back down when she sees that her son's future is in jeopardy because of what did or didn't happen. This mother, like most mothers, gets the big picture - it's not about obeying the law, it's about justice. She doesn't want her son's confession, she doesn't even want to come clean, she only wants to clean up the mess.

Margaret's situation is compromised, however, when a dark, desperate stranger named Alec (ER's Goran Visnjic) bribes her for $50,000 to bury what appears to be evidence: videotape of Beau and Darby making love. What follows from this point is part of why the film is so good - when Margaret grapples with her own issues involving her son's homosexuality, we see it in the depth of her gaze, nothing more. McGehee and Siegel clearly know that less is more when working with Swinton's kind of screen presence.

As Alec, Goran Visnjic is somewhere between his hero persona from ER and the villain he played in Practical Magic. He sees about Margaret what we see - a mother who never gets a break, who must do it all alone. Something in her strength cracks Alec's reserve, and in turn, something about his decency cracks hers. They are like water contained - just one crack and it all comes spilling out.

It's no wonder that the film's theme is about seeing beneath the surface, and that this point would be driven home so elegantly with the images of water and the illusions it creates. One shot in particular shows the characters trapped in a drop of water coming out of the faucet. But there are many different versions of water that appear, whether it's water and fish in a tank, or a 5 gallon bottle of drinking water that crashes to the floor, or the sea that has swallowed up Margaret's husband, or finally, the massive Lake Tahoe that's all around them.

Ordinary people pushed to do extraordinary things -- this is how The Deep End draws us in and winds us tightly and doesn't let us free, not to look at our watch, not to think about the plot, barely even to breathe. We watch Tilda Swinton's face, the wordless transformation, the burying of passionate feeling.

The Deep End is being embraced by critics and fans alike, the opposite of what happened with Suture. Part of the credit for that goes to the miraculous performance of Swinton, but the other part is that these are writers and directors who strike a balance that, quite simply, keeps the project in check. Two artists, in this case, work together better than one - so much so that it seems almost silly that the enormous task of directing a film would be left to one person. Here, every aspect of the film has been given full attention - the visuals, consumed with images of water and fish, do not overshadow the story, which is unexpectedly moving. Usually there is one or the other, but rarely both.

Or maybe it's that this kind of film, borne out of an era that placed an entire film on a woman's shoulders, has been too long coming. After all, women characters who aren't just there to be pretty and sexy, in films that aren't preachy or misguided, are few and far between. This film glides along a smooth surface and doesn't take a dive until it knows where it's going, what it's trying to find out, and what it's trying to hide.

©2001 Sasha Stone
CineScene