The Post and Courier
Thursday, May 10, 2012: E9
The water is chilly in this ‘Deep Blue Sea’ movie review
By Connie ogle McClatchy Newspapers
way she loves him, and so she lights the gas fire and breathes deeply. he Deep Blue Sea” is a sufWe learn that Hester’s unhappifocating movie, and it’s ness goes deeper than mere pique, meant to be. Set around but a woman who tries to end her 1950 in england and based on the life because her beau forgot an play by Terence Ratigan and diimportant date is a hard woman rected by British director Terence to pity. Davies (“House of Mirth”), it has a And that’s the difficulty in claustrophobic mood that mimics warming up to “The Deep Blue the emotional state of the unhappy Sea”: The first thing we see Hester Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz), do is foolish and inconceivable, who is attempting to gas herself in which makes it hard to get invested her small, dark flat when the film in her future. naturally the foropens. gotten birthday is just a symbol Hester has left her much-older of what’s going wrong in Hester’s husband, William, a dull though life. like many women of her time, kind judge (Simon Russell Beale), she went from her father’s house for the younger, more virile Freddy to her husband’s, and the mar(Tom Hiddleston), a former airriage she entered into was sedate man with whom she is living in if financially comfortable. Passin. Careless, high-spirited Freddy sion played no role; lust is a new has forgotten her birthday, and this and unfamiliar emotion, and she omission signals to Hester can’t live with the fact that Freddy that Freddy doesn’t love her the doesn’t love her the way she loves
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Music Box FilMs
1/2 (out of five stars) Director: Terence Davies cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, simon Russell Beale rateD: R for sexual situations and adult themes running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes What DiD you think?: Find this review at charlestonscene. com and offer your opinion.
Tom Hiddleston as Freddie Page and Rachel Weisz as Hester Col- William tries hard not to reveal lyer in “The Deep Blue Sea.” how badly he has been hurt — and it moves at a languid pace him, which makes her seem more through the changing emotions of a simpleton than she probably is of the trio. The burden on the meant to be. cast is great; they have to breathe The film follows the aftermath life into dark, oppressive rooms of her suicide attempt — Freddy, that underscore Hester’s sense who feels the best of his life ended of entrapment, and happily when the war did, is furious, and they’re up to the task. Davies
gets the look and mood of postwar england just right, though Freddy’s cheery flyboy lingo seems like something out of a bad melodrama. in one haunting war flashback inside a train tunnel, Davies’ camera pans through a series of weary, frightened faces as bombs rain down and finally lands on William and Hester standing bravely together as one of the refugees sings “Molly Malone.” in that moment, we understand that Hester has not left William thoughtlessly, that they’re still tied by the past they shared. yet the film would like us to believe that Hester will go on from her fateful decision in the film’s opening moment, because life is like that — it goes on. But “The Deep Blue Sea” has given us no real reason to care what happens next.