Posted at 10:30 a.m.
Adrian Lyne signed some of the most significant films of the 1980s and 1990s: flash dance, Nine ½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, chic and shocking films that were part of the aesthetic trend of that time. Absent from screens since Unfaithfulreleased 20 years ago, the veteran filmmaker is back in business by bringing to the screen a noir novel by Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley), author often adapted to the cinema.
Published in 1957, the novel Deep Water has already been the subject of a first film adaptation in 1981. Directed by Michel Deville, deep waters starred Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Four decades later, Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) and Sam Levinson (creator of the series Euphoria) sign the scenario of this new version which will certainly not go down in history. At least not in the desired way.
Surveying the mysteries of the old-fashioned “erotic thriller”, as if time had frozen at the time of its most glorious years, Adrian Lyne offers a film which quickly sinks into grotesque effects. First drawing in broad strokes, and in a complacent way, the character of Melinda (Ana De Armas as a too exuberant femme fatale in the eyes of society), the story then switches to Vic, husband of the latter (Ben Affleck, to whom one seems to have asked to be as extinguished as possible), which suddenly finds itself with murderous impulses.
From a story that originally had good psychological depth, the artisans of Deep Water only used a pretext to offer a preposterous story, with repetitive effects (how often can we see Ben Affleck at the top of a staircase looking suspiciously at what is happening below?), to which no one seems to believe.
Deep Water (deep waters in French version) is presented exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
Thriller
Deep Water
(VF: deep waters)
Adrian Lyne
With Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts
1:55