Review: The Deep End (2001)

This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

The Deep End

Rating

Director

Scott Mcgehee, David Siegel

Screenplay

Scott Mcgehee, David Siegel (Novel: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding)

Length

1h 41m

Starring

Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Peter Donat, Josh Lucas, Raymond Barry, Tamara Hope, Jordan Dorrance, Heather Mathieson, Holmes Osborne

MPAA Rating

Review

A young mother’s son gets involved with an abusive clubber and the circumstances leading up to and after form the basis of “The Deep End.”

Beau Hall (Jonathan Tucker) is new to the world and has never been in trouble before. He’s growing up and going through those difficult years of faux independence when he comes across a sleazy clubber named Darby (Josh Lucas) and begins experimenting sexually with him. Beau’s mother, Margaret (Tilda Swinton), discovers he’s hanging around with a negative element, but doesn’t know that it’s anything more than platonic. She visits Darby and threatens him, in front of others, to stay away from her son or he’d regret it.

When Beau has a late night rendezvous with Darby out in the boathouse, the scene escalates into a fight and eventually an accidental death. Margaret discovers the body of the gay man washed ashore by her boat and goes to great lengths to cover up the body, thinking her son has killed the man and not knowing it’s an accident.

While Margaret’s trying to cover everything up, a loan shark arrives with incriminating evidence against her son. The crook, Alex (Goran Visnjic), tries to get money out of Margaret or threatens to release the video to others, thus destroying Beau’s innocence and risking his implication in Darby’s murder.

The movie examines Margaret’s descent into the “Deep

End” of her psyche. Her crash into despair and what she, as a mother, would do to protect her children. Swinton is heartbreaking as the depressed mother. She runs around desperately attempting to save her son, all the while not knowing that she’s destroying herself.

Visnjic plays a character similar to Dr. Kovac, his role on television’s “ER,” with the difference that he’s a crook in the movie. Tucker doesn’t give us much to care about with his troubled youth. Instead he causes us to wonder if we really should care, but Swinton more than makes up for Tucker’s lacking.

Having two directors at the helm doesn’t help keep the film from getting muddled. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who also wrote the screenplay, know their subject matter well and while they share a vision, the film’s uneven pace could be the result of discrepancies between directing styles. It could also be the relative uneasiness the script provides through its own language and unenthusiastic pace.

“The Deep End” presents an interesting perspective on the self-destructive nature of mothers trying to keep their children safe. It’s a subject that has been done before and has been done better, but this film does manage to give its audience plenty to think about. Margaret’s collapse into despair and her internal strife dealing with the consequences and potential discovery of her action make it more of a suspense film than a message film.