DEEP WATER

Stars: Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Grace Jenkins, Dash Mihook, Lil Rey Howley, Rachel Blanchard, Kristen Connelly, Jacob Elordi, Brendan Miller and Finn Wittrock
Writers: Zach Helm and Sam Levinson; based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith.
Director: Adrian Lyne 

Rating: ★ ★ ½

Deep Water is the fourth film starring Ben Affleck and his belle du jour, and none of them have been very good. In 2000, his love for the pre-Goop entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow led to the ill-fitting romance Bounce; as the miscast lead in Daredevil (2003), he made his missus Jennifer Garner do all the work; then, the infamous Gigli (also, 2003), a mega-dud in which the off-screen hots that he had for Jennifer Lopez somehow became a turgid, chemistry-free pairing in one of Hollywood’s biggest bombs.  

In his latest melding of the personal and professional, Affleck stars with now ex-girlfriend Ana De Armas, who was on a roll of spirited, sexy types when she shot this and No Time to Die a few years back (both, pre-Knives Out, a much better vehicle for her talents). Ben plays Vic, the cuckolded husband to Ana’s libidinous wife, Melinda; they have an arrangement that allows her to indulge with younger, fitter men than her hulking, surly husband, and she flaunts it at every opportunity. Most of the first half of the film is her drunkenly pashing strangers at parties while he watches on, blank-faced and increasingly agitated.

But there’s a dark cloud hanging over their upmarket Louisiana suburb - the unsolved murder of a young man, one of many who had been openly intimate (is that a thing?) with Melinda. Everybody kinda thinks Vic did it, but mostly turn the other cheek. Vic doesn’t really play it down - in fact, he frightens off Melinda’s latest conquest, blonde dufus Brendan Miller, by reminding him he’s the number one suspect in the murder of her last shag. Then, the death toll rises - piano player Jacob Elordi drowns, despite a very well-defined upper chest and arms, and goody-two-shoes hunk Finn Wittrock makes the mistake of going for a long drive with Vic.

Vic is a millionaire military-drone inventor, giving the film a streak of irony that never really plays out (he tortures himself by watching her, and all the town is watching him, while his toys watch the world). In the family mix is moppet daughter Trixie, played by Grace Jenkins giving a great ‘creepy kid’ performance (is she in on it with her dad??). And, to top it all off, Vic has a creepy hothouse out back where he breeds hundreds of snails that may or may not do his murderous bidding for him. Oh boy…  

Deep Water is the first film in 20 years for British director Adrian Lyne, a passion project adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel that has gone through umpteen false starts and several studio regimes. He last directed Diane Lane to an Oscar nomination for Unfaithful (2002), and, for two decades prior, crafted some of Hollywood’s most sexually-charged dramas - Foxes (1980) Flashdance (1983), 9½ Weeks (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Indecent Proposal (1993) and Lolita (1997). He was the go-to guy for manipulative relationship dynamics, gender politics, the dark heart of contemporary American marriage and frank sexuality, the likes of which few mainstream directors would covet.

Ultimately Deep Water is an unfocussed, occasionally confusing drama, which must rile Lyne, who would have seen the dramatic potential of the murky morality in Vic and Melinda’s life at some point in the project’s 20-year journey to the screen. His best films intellectualise the juicy plotting of your average airport novel; Deep Water just feels like an airport novel. 

It’s not without its watchable moments, most involving Ben and Ana striving for inclusion in the ‘married co-stars’ club alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in their Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? prime, and tanking spectacularly. Deep Water is not Razzie-terrible, it’s just mildly OK, which is even more disappointing.