Summary
Vic Allen appears to accept his young wife Melanie’s flirtations with men of her own age
with a generous insouciance. He amuses himself by scaring off her potential lovers
by claiming that he killed one of their predecessors. This only increases
his wife’s antagonism towards him, but Vic loves her too much to let her go. When
Melanie’s next suitor is found dead in a swimming pool, she is convinced that her husband
killed him, but she has no proof. Their psychological battle of wills has only just
begun...
Review
Although somewhat marred by its jarring excesses (particularly the overuse of music to
create and emphasise mood), Eaux profondes is a respectable adaptation of a Patricia
Highsmith novel, painting a disturbing portrait of marital conflict in a seemingly respectable
bourgeois setting. The director, Michel Deville, is clearly influenced by the thrillers
of Alfred Hitchcock and his French counterpart Claude Chabrol, particularly in the use
of camera movements and set lighting to create tension and suspense.
Jean-Louis Trintignant stars in what must undoubtedly rate as one of his most chilling
performances, playing a man who flies into a rage when his pet snails are endangered but
who has no compunction whatsoever about killing other men to keep his wife. This
first rate performance is closely matched by that of his co-star, Isabelle Huppert, who
portrays exactly the right blend of feminine vulnerability and cold masculine resolve.
Although the film tends to drift in its second half, and its ending is far from perfect,
Eaux profondes is a curiously compelling work which is not afraid to shock its
audience. It has the characteristic tongue-in-cheek quirkiness of Michel Deville’s
other films and it is in many ways one of his most accessible and sinister works.
© James Travers 2002
|
