The erotic thriller genre has long been thought of as dead in the water, by audiences and by studios. Though the genre received mainstream attention with Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction in 1987, which received six Academy Award nominations and played in theaters for nine months, it quickly fell from critical grace while maintaining relevance in pop culture. Fatal Attraction, along with Basic Instinct (1992), directed by another director synonymous with the genre, Paul Verhoeven, became cultural staples, while other films in the genre like the maligned Body of Evidence (Uli Edel, 1993) and the now re-examined In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003) landed with a thud. Though there are of course cult classics within the genre like Bound (Lana and Lily Wachowski, 1996), sweaty, sensual, and shocking cinema has been put on the back burner in the United States for upwards of three decades.
In our now sexless cinematic landscape dominated by franchises meant to appeal to adolescent boys, directors like Verhoeven and Lyne are putting their best efforts towards bringing back the erotic thriller. Though Verhoeven’s Benedetta from last year could only be described as an erotic thriller in the loosest terms, Lyne’s newest attempt, Deep Water, adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name, is a return-to-form for the director. Unfortunately, this attempt is neither erotic nor thrilling — an anti-climatic effort from everyone involved. Dropped unceremoniously on Hulu after a whirlwind quarantine romance between its two leads, Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck, Deep Water is a lackluster film that is far more boring than the staged paparazzi shoots, spilt coffee, and trashed cardboard cutout spawned by the BenAna romance.
Deep Water focuses on Vic (Affleck) and Melinda Van Allen (de Armas), a married couple whose partnership is on thin ice as Melinda flaunts her affairs with other men who, one by one, go missing or turn up dead. We, the audience, are thrown right in the middle of Vic and Melinda’s seemingly loveless marriage, with all of their friends knowing about Melinda’s affairs as she dances and gets drunk with new suitor Joel Dash (Brendan Miller) at a party. Each of their friends probe Vic about the relationship, where he insists that Melinda is her own woman and it’s not his job to control her; that is, until he pulls Joel aside and claims he killed Melinda’s previous male associate. From here on, Vic and Melinda exchange spiteful remarks, go to boring parties over and over again, and generally have a lack of sexual chemistry that does not make their “opposites attract” coupling work.
The casting of Deep Water is not necessarily bad: Lil Rel Howery is always a delight even with little screen time as friend Grant, Grace Jenkins as Vic and Melinda’s young daughter Trixie brings some life to the lifeless Van Allen home, and even de Armas is giving it her best effort, capturing her character well enough that at first it feels hard to sympathize with her. Even her casting against Affleck makes sense — after all, Vic berates Melinda for her childish tastes and attitudes as Affleck is 16 years de Armas’ senior. However, some of the script feels as if it’s working against de Armas. One particular scene in which Melinda screams at Vic for joking about her dead friend has de Armas yelling with a mouthful of toothpaste, making her speech indecipherable. In other scenes, de Armas channels a sexual energy needed to categorize the film as an erotic thriller, but the scenes end up more campy than anything, the script and actor’s tone not quite landing the way they intend to.
Affleck is either severely miscast, or the writing by Sam Levinson and Zach Helm is severely weak. Highsmith’s novel characterizes Vic within its first pages as a man whose face never reveals his inner feelings: “He sat slouched, with a neutral expression on his face… It was his mouth that made his face ambiguous… because his blue eyes… gave no clue as to what he was thinking or feeling.” Unfortunately for Affleck, he is an actor that wears his heart on his sleeve. Though he attempts to play Vic with a kind of heartless menace, most of his emotionless moments, such as a speech he gives to suitor Tony Cameron (Finn Wittrock), never reach the thrilling heights they need to. Though the contrast between Vic and Melinda is written and spoken very clearly — he is emotionally grounded and wanted a marriage and children while Melinda is sporadic and hates her settled down life — Affleck never quite manages to inhabit the character. It’s only in his moments of desperation, such as his quivering inquiry as to whether Melinda is bored with him, that the performance feels more natural. Otherwise, the light behind Affleck’s eyes never dims, leaving him not as a frightening murderer but as a frustrated husband who tends to snails in his free time.
As for Lyne’s directing, while the film objectively looks nice, there are few shots or frames that excite the viewer. Eigil Bryld’s cinematography does good work capturing the slimy humidity of Vic’s snail greenhouse and the chlorine mist of a swimming pool; but the same elusive, mysterious energy of those shots is absent for most of the film. Fun choices like Melinda shaving in a clawfoot bathtub are surrounded by minimalist set-design that, though it mirrors the homes of the rich today, is boring to look at.
Levinson and Helm’s screenplay is weak, but not in the over-the-top way that many maligned and even celebrated erotic thrillers are. Melinda is inconsistent, which is supposed to be the point, but by the last third of the film is incredibly off, even for the character. Sometimes scenes seem intentionally comedic: Don Wilson (Tracy Letts) catches Vic poking a dead body with a stick, and Vic stammers through a conversation in probably the scene where Affleck seems the most natural, though the character is ill-at-ease. The next scene, where Don texts and drives away from Vic who, chasing on his bike, has no way of catching up to the car, also elicits laughter — but is that the intent?
Scenes meander on and on while others allow the actors to create a fun tension. One instance sees Vic spotting Melinda inside of a restaurant talking to who he believes is a private investigator. The couple bicker, Melinda faking smiles for the investigator and Vic reveling in his bitterness towards her. Scenes like that create a sharp image of the couple, but are few and far between, pushing aside the slinky, bitter Melinda and jealous, resentful Vic for the screaming Melinda and the bored Vic. The film ends on a cyclical note, a technique that can act as a gut-punch, as in Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan and Joel Coen, 2013), but here is just confusing.
Deep Water is a fruitless effort to revitalize the erotic thriller genre or stand on its own. Though the film is what audiences in the United States have missed out on for decades, an adult, non-franchise film made with Hollywood stars, the pieces never come together to make something great or even very interesting. It never earns its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, nor does it live up to the excitement it generated because of its stars’ own real-life romance. Maybe it was going for the hypnotic sexual frustration of Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999), or the methodical slow-burn of Gone Girl. Instead, it’s not steamy enough to be erotic, exciting enough to be thrilling, or even campy enough to become a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic.
