Deep Water

2022 - 3 - 18

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The movie's conceit is right up director Adrian Lyne's alley: a story about the mixing of sex and violence. But the film, starring Ana De Armas and Ben ...

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Deep Water is a movie for the mean and horny (unknown)

Deep Water asks the deep moral question: Can a drone engineer be sexy?

They became a visible couple in March 2020, right before the pandemic shut down all social life in the US. Perhaps because of the lack of anyone doing anything and de Armas’s newfound stardom (Knives Out was released in the fall of 2019), photographers spent a lot of time tracking Affleck and de Armas’s activities together. Deep Water also functions as a cherished reminder of the infamous Affleck/de Armas real-life relationship, trapped eternally in amber. It was a time many things were taken from us — and for a brief stretch, it looked like we might not get this movie. Deep Water is the movie you’ll want to text your friends about, and then invite them over to watch again, together, so you can witness their reactions when, say, de Armas pantomimes plucking one of Affleck’s stray pubic hairs out of her teeth. They officially became the “It” couple of the pandemic quarantine. There’s much more menace and much less opacity with Vic, who presents as more of a loser than Nick ever did. Affleck is a guru of calibrating and finding the difference between. The two reportedly fell for each other when Deep Water was filmed in fall of 2019. Vic (Affleck) is a man who invented a microchip that’s integral to drone warfare; he’s become rich off of drone murders. She whispers alarm into phrases like “lobster bisque” and “mac and cheese” in a way that will now haunt me anytime I look at a New American menu. He’s married to Melinda (de Armas), a terminally amorous woman who seemingly hates Vic. That’s not because she’s an ethical pacifist or concerned about the American government’s history of “accidental” civilian casualties, but because Vic is nice and boring. This setup eventually goes sour as Melinda escalates her affairs, hoping to get reactions out of Vic, and Vic gets angrier about how embarrassing those affairs are.

Don’t Miss the Real Lesson to Deep Water, the Ben Affleck–Ana de Armas Sex Thriller for the Ages (unknown)

This movie is a cautionary tale, and the problem is not the overheated sex.

But I also want you to think hard about your own friend group, and the position you and your partner occupy within it. If you’ve ever been at a gathering where a celebrity unexpectedly showed up, you’ve experienced the way that the attention of every single person turns to them, as if they are a magnet and you all are mere iron filings quivering in the famous person’s field. When a couple sucks up all the oxygen in a friend group, it’s no wonder everyone else gets a little light-headed! Later at the same party, Vic threatens the bohunk, news of which soon spreads to the whole friend group. But at every one of those parties, those poor friends have to deal with Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas). We first meet all these fine folks at one such party, where Mary (Devyn A. Tyler) tells a withdrawn Vic that “a few of us are concerned” about the way Melinda is all over the blond, single bohunk in their midst. One of them is flirting and the other is sulking, and she’s feeling up some guy on the dance floor.

Deep Water (unknown)

It's really a vicious piece of work, a movie made by a filmmaker who is unafraid to see the primal, darker parts that beautiful people hide behind their ...

It’s really a vicious piece of work, a movie made by a filmmaker who is unafraid to see the primal, darker parts that beautiful people hide behind their gorgeous facades. We meet Vic Van Allen (Affleck) and his wife Melinda (Ana de Armas) deep in the misery of a failed partnership. The next day he claims that he is, but the basic machination of the script by Zach Helm (“Stranger Than Fiction”) and Sam Levinson (“Euphoria”) has been set in motion: Melinda cheats, and it’s possible that Vic kills the guys with whom Melinda cheats. Some corners of the internet have been anticipating this project as a return to “movies for adults,” a genre that has undeniably gone away in the studio production line now that almost every movie has to get a PG-13. And the fact that it’s the first film in two decades from the director of “Fatal Attraction” and “9 ½ Weeks” sets a standard for the film that might lead to disappointment. I’m eager to see a reportedly longer version because there’s a lot here that works, including a great Ben Affleck performance and the kind of sexual tension that Americans simply don’t offer in the 2020s. Based on the 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith, the genius who also wrote Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, which should give you some idea of the games being played here, “Deep Water” doesn’t waste time with the “happy days” of the Van Allen union.

'Deep Water' Review: Erotic Thriller With Snails (Forbes)

'Deep Water' directed by Adrian Lyne ('Fatal Attraction'), starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, is a rather disappointing erotic thriller.

But, in the end, however great their performances may be, it is hard to sympathize with either of these characters, and therefore, to even care about what happens in their marriage. This interplay of glances repeats throughout the movie, and suggests how Vic and Melinda play with the sexual chemistry and desire still present between them. At the first party in the movie, Melinda catches her husband gazing at her from inside the house as she kisses another man in the garden. In Lyne's film, Melinda and Vic's relationship is a murky and complicated one. In the opening sequence, Vic catches his wife, who is sitting on stairs, looking at him longingly as he undresses. Adrian Lyne's new movie, Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, brings the erotic thriller back to the fore, but it's a slimy affair.

Deep Water: The Wildest Thriller Movies to Watch Next | Den of Geek (Den of Geek)

They rarely make movies like the Ben Affleck-led Deep Water anymore, but erotic thrillers used to be big business at the multiplex.

It’s hard to think of “Blue Velvet” the song and not immediately think of Blue Velvet the film, as the two have become so inexorably linked since David Lynch’s ground-breaking neo-noir thriller was first released in 1986. Bridget is disturbingly intelligent, sexy, and willing to pull out all the stops when screwing over her husband (Bill Pullman) and the rando she meets at a bar after stealing his money (Peter Berg). She is diabolical, and doesn’t feel the need to reform either. It also forged several key industry friendships, as cinematographer Bill Pope was hired to create the slick look of Bound for the budding Wachowskis after the original director of photography quit in protest, and he would continue working with the duo as they moved on to create the first three Matrix films. We are then introduced to a new female character in sex worker Liz Blake (Nancy Allen), who finds Kate’s body and catches a glimpse of the murderer, placing her right at the top of their kill list. Starring Michael Douglas in one of the most uncool roles of his long career (he wears a V-neck sweater to a nightclub at one point) and the refreshingly outspoken Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct tells the story of Stone’s enigmatic writer – who may or may not be responsible for a string of violent murders – as she reels in Douglas’ investigating former coke-fiend cop with her blunt feminine wiles. Deep Water itself is helmed by Adrian Lyne, famous for the likes of 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Indecent Proposal, and he shepherded it into fruition after a twenty year absence from the director’s chair.