Até o Fim

I saw this film last summer in the theaters and while it didn't do much for me at the time, something in it stayed with me. I rented it again and watched it twice more and am now convinced it is a terrific film.

A lot has been said about Swinton's portrayal of a frustrated housewife and she is brilliant, she carries the film with a head-on intensity.

But the screenplay should also be lauded. Yes, this is straight out of 1940's noir, but it all works.

A lot has been said about the sex and sexuality switch of Swinton's son, but it works perfectly. One might ask . . . why doesn't she ask her son about the body before she dumps it? But that would involve TALKING to her son about his sexuality. She'd rather bury the evidence, than ever admit to herself that her son is gay.

Over the course of the film, Swinton begins to understand her son better, she realizes that everyone has their secrets and desires. Her son also realizes the worry he has put his mother through. The last shot, of mother and son huddled together on the bed is of two strong-willed people finally understanding each other as equals. It's a wonderfully telling moment.

Be sure to watch this film more than once . . . it can be taken on many levels.

james

THE DEEP END is an original and suspenseful thriller, pitting a mother, played by Tilda Swinton, against a blackmailer, played by Goran Visnjic. It's the relationship between the two that drives this movie, as Visnjic's character begins to change because of the decency and honesty he encounters in Swinton's character. I gave this 8 out of 10 instead of 9 out of 10 because the ending is somewhat predictable, it's like something from a 1930's big Hollywood studio film. Nevertheless, a compelling script and convincing performances from all the actors make this worth seeing.

8/10

Who came up with the summary, "spirals out of control"? Margaret, is, if anything, too much in control! One waits throughout the movie for her control to break. Who put her in charge of her son's destiny? Why is she willing, even at the moment she "speaks the truth" in all but this one respect, to specify HERSELF as the one responsible for her son's lover's death? She'll do anything to help him go on to college as a music major, but she won't be able to shield him always from the consequences of his own bad judgment. And perhaps her horrified expression as she watches the video reflects this realization as much as it does her visceral horror at the activity taking place. He is the one who is "spiraling out of control"--HER control. She is trying, presumably at her husband's behest before he shipped out, to make & keep the world safe for her family. But their domestic tranquility is built on a foundation of corruption--that of nearby Reno & its gambling enterprises & related criminal activities. Perhaps at the end when she breaks down & weeps, she is finally letting go of her "sense of control," along with her innocence, which has been compromised much more deeply than that of her son.

It appears that either this movie works for you or doesn't. It worked for me for several reasons, not the least being the great performance by Tilda Swinton as Margaret, an upper-middle-class mother with an obsessive desire to protect her son. Swinton projects the image of a woman who can handle any situation; blackmail, the revelation of her son's sexual orientation, the notion that her son may be a murderer, taking care of her aging father-in-law, and running the family are all in a day's work. I was drawn into the story by the beautiful photography, the captivating music, and the plot twists. For whatever reason I did not dwell on plot holes but simply allowed myself to be absorbed. And, if you accept Margaret's almost pathologically obsessive devotion to her family, then most of what happens hangs together.

I found the unexpected relationship that develops between Margaret and the blackmailer to be interesting. The experience is more transformative for him than for her. I also like the way the tables were turned on the relationship between Margaret and her spoiled son. In the beginning his behavior was confusing to Margaret and he was not willing to talk about it and in the end Margaret's behavior was mysterious to her son and she was not willing to talk about it.

It was only the contrived ending that bothered me.

THE DEEP END / (2001) *** (out of four)

By Blake French:

Lake Tahoe, the tenth deepest lake in the world, is a long, cold body of clear, turquoise water thriving at 6,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Isolated by snow-covered mountain tops, ponderosa pines, and upper class wood homes, this is the perfect backdrop for The Deep End.

The Deep End captures some of this harrowing atmosphere, but I wanted even more. The photography, by Giles Nuttgens, won the coveted Best Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year for its unflinching look at images of Lake Tahoe awash in moral tensions. The camera cuts through aquariums, dripping water faucets, bursting water bottles, and of course, across and beneath the lake's surface. On a photographic level, this is one great movie.

Writers/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel found their inspiration for The Deep End from the little known 1940's novel The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. The Ladies Home Journal first published an abridged version of the story. It became so popular that the writer eventually made it into a novel. According to the film's press notes, even Alfred Hitchcook was impressed as evident when he chose the book for his classic anthology My Favorites in Suspense-1959. Holding's novel was the only full length feature book of fiction included on that list.

McGehee and Siegel previously worked on the independent film Suture. "In their day, stories like these were very subversive because they asked questions about the nature of families, about the limits of communication, and the loneliness of personal sacrifice," says Siegel of Holding's story. "We wanted to bring those same elements in a contemporary setting with characters that would be sympathetic and believable to people today."

Holding certainly did have an innate understanding that true suspense emerges not just from violence and mystery, but also from the fabric of everyday life. The Deep End examines a housewife named Margaret (Tilda Swinton) who protects her gay teenage son (Jonathan Tucker) by covering up the death of his lover (Josh Lucas). Did her son kill this person? Someone might know the truth behind this act of violence, but silence has a very high price tag.

A very involving introduction and first act suffer after the diabolical murder plot takes a downhill spiral into a different set of events. Alek Spera (Gordan Visnijc), who needs money for his boss (Raymond J. Berry), creates a blackmail scheme. The film goes downhill from here, but the overall product is far from boring.

That's largely because of the beautiful performances. Tilda Swinton, seen opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in 1999's The Beach, leads the cast with a powerhouse performance. Swinton paints a vivid, intriguing portrait of domestic serenity, peaceful ordinariness, and motherhood's merciful nature. She can move the audience with utter silence; her eyes exclude intelligence, instinct, and compassion. She completes what the movie leaves unfinished, including her character's adherence to routine and complete loss of moral compass.

Gordon Visnjic (Dr. Luka Kovac on "ER.") with his dark, brooding physique, creates a shadowy nature for his character. His motives remain a mystery; we never know why he does what he does. It lets the audience guess-but we do not have much to guess with. The film does not complete his character. He's one of the most interesting characters here, but Visnjic needs more to chew on.

The filmmakers comment about the hidden romantic feelings between Margaret and Alek. "It's the kind of romance I miss in movies. It's not explicit and it is not necessarily even realized, but it is there in a haunting, melancholic way," says Visnjic. Where? We never really grasp these potentially fascinating plot points because the movie never examines these emotions. This is the kind of material that would have taken The Deep End to another level of interest.