Review: The Deep End

Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s film doesn’t work particularly well as melodrama.

The Deep End
Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Deep End traces the journey a mother must make in order to protect her son from harm. “She’s a mom, not a moron.” So says Darby (Josh Lucas) to his young lover, Beau (Jonathan Tucker), assuring the teen that his mother, Margaret (Tilda Swinton), is well aware of the fact that her son is gay. The lascivious Darby is a club-hopping 30-year-old, warned by Margaret to keep away from her talented son. Hours later, after a fight with Beau in Margaret’s boathouse, Darby accidentally kills himself when he falls off a boardwalk and is impaled by a boat’s anchor. The Deep End is an otherwise moody procedural, detailing how Margaret goes about hiding Darby’s corpse in the water surrounding her lakeside home. As Margaret’s father-in-law, Jack, Peter Donat does little but sit around until his character’s heart attack puts another kink in Margaret’s master plan. Margaret’s blackmailer (Goran Visnjic) had demanded $50,000 for his silence but happens to walk in on Margaret giving Jack CPR and ends up sympathizing with the superwoman. This otboiler doesn’t work very well as melodrama (the film is a remake of Max Ophüls’s superior The Reckless Moment), though in adding the element of homosexuality, the filmmakers evoke Margaret’s struggle to keep her son safe but how she quietly negotiates his sexuality. Margaret and Beau never address the issue of his homosexuality, and as such The Deep End works less as a bona fide thriller than a does as the earnest story of how a mother and son grapple with a difficult moment in their relationship without growing apart.

Score: 
 Cast: Tilda Swinton, Gordon Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Peter Donat, Josh Lucas, Raymond J. Barry, Tamara Hope, Jordon Dorrance, Margo Krindel  Director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel  Screenwriter: Scott McGehee, David Siegel  Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures  Running Time: 99 min  Rating: R  Year: 2001  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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