“I really mean it. It’s not just a line. I really think you’re the most attractive girl I’ve ever met.” As soon as Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston) utters those words, we know the woman he utters them to is doomed. Actually, we already knew that: “The Deep Blue Sea” begins as Hester Collyer writes a letter, gathers some coins and uses them to flood her small London flat with gas. Why would a woman as beautiful as Rachel Weisz, who plays Hester, want to kill herself? As her day progresses, flashbacks tell us the story of her content but passionless marriage to judge Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) and her affair with a handsome but slightly unstable Royal Air Force pilot.
Freddie was something of a war hero, the way he tells it, and his mind still seems to live in those dangerous, exhilarating days, though it’s been about five years since the war ended. He’s attractive, but it’s sometimes difficult to see why Hester gives up her comfortable life for him. “We doing something important for dear old Blighty,” Freddie says, in a line that would have most other women rolling their eyes.
| ON SCREEN |
| ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ |
| 3.5 out of 4 stars |
| Stars: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale |
| Director: Terence Davies |
| Rated: R for a scene of sexuality and nudity |
| Running time: 98 minutes |
But Hester’s never known sexual passion before. They kiss in the street, and a friend jokingly calls after them to cut it out. “They can’t ration everything,” Freddie says. Hester rations nothing. And that will prove her undoing.
These are familiar themes; the movie is based on Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play of the same name. Davies makes it art. The director of the 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” is in familiar territory, but he makes the viewer feel that he is not. It takes us a while even to get to know our heroine. The first part of the story is sold nearly without words. We can guess how Hester must be feeling by the troubled look in her eyes and the moving Samuel Barber violin concerto on the soundtrack.
Hester’s mother-in-law warns her against passion. “What would you replace it with?” Hester asks. “A guarded enthusiasm.” It’s an age-old question, of course: Is passion worth the price? This elegant, beautiful, sad film explores an old story in an emotionally violently new way.
