Reviews

Review: The Deep Blue Sea

A bad dream trapped in amber

By MICHAEL ATKINSON | March 29, 2012

2.0 Stars

Like a bad dream trapped in amber, Terence Davies's studied film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's famous 1952 play is both spectrally beautiful and frozen in self-regard. Rachel Weisz stars as Hester, the young wife of a dull older judge (Simon Russell Beale) who becomes besotted with a layabout ex-RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston), throwing over her middle-Brit tepidity for a passionate existence groveling before the lout. Moment by moment, the film limns a crucial bit of British character — the lostness between propriety and passion, especially as it manifested during and after the intense heart massage of WWII. Still, however revered Rattigan's play is, Davies's film is often as enervating as its heroine, and Weisz's casting makes you wonder why such a beautiful woman would put up with either of these two pickles. Rattigan's drama is a small room to maneuver in, and in the end Hester's despair is hers alone.

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Topics: Reviews , Movie Reviews, Rachel Weisz, film

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ARTICLES BY MICHAEL ATKINSON

REVIEW: THE DEEP BLUE SEA | March 29, 2012
Like a bad dream trapped in amber, Terence Davies's studied film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's famous 1952 play is both spectrally beautiful and frozen in self-regard.

REVIEW: YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS | November 08, 2011
A sublime meta-fictional trifle that evokes Abbas Kiarostami's '90s mirror-films of children, Oliver Laxe's jaunt lands in a semi-rural Moroccan school for orphans.

REVIEW: WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN | November 02, 2011
Made as a communal experiment, the film is an avalanche of amateur avant-garde hijinks, closer to Brakhage and Markopoulos than to Hollywood.

REVIEW: STRAW DOGS | September 20, 2011
Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.

REVIEW: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MCKINLEY NOLAN | August 30, 2011
An investigative doc brimming with cultural resonance and historical savvy, Henry Corra's film has ahold of a pungent story — that of the titular black Texan fella who vanished in Vietnam 40 years ago.