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By the time the first puff of cigarette smoke is exhaled in Terence Davies’s “The Deep Blue Sea,” it’s as if the film’s aesthetic has suddenly sprung to life and coiled around the characters, instead of just framing them in a swoony romantic haze. An evocative, ethereal beauty of a movie, this ‘50s-era London drama, adapted by Davies from Terence Rattigan’s play, seems kissed by the dust of its postwar setting, a look that makes its central love triangle all the more urgent and poignant.
Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) is the wife of a doting judge named William (Simon Russell Beale), but her comfort in his household can’t match the fire she feels for Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), a Royal Air Force pilot who feeds her passion, but knows the two are an ill match. As Hester observes, it’s hard to be “caught between the devil and the deep blue sea,” and when it’s clear neither man, however wonderful in his own right, can meet her needs, the woebegone woman attempts suicide.
Such a gal might usually draw contempt from an audience, and indeed, Hester is a hard character to love, but as written by Rattigan, and as played by the never-better Weisz, she’s a rich and tragic woman who needs to lose all to start again, her emotional toll akin to the effects of war on Freddie. As is typical of Davies’s films, memory haunts every perfectly constructed scene in “The Deep Blue Sea,” most notably in a stunning centerpiece tracking shot, which sees a second contemplation of suicide interrupted by a flashback of Hester and William, the two of them sheltered with others in the Tube while bombs drop above.
“What happened to you, Hester?” William eventually asks. “Love, that’s all,” she replies. The film’s exchanges of dialogue, while sometimes greeting-card ready, often amass a whole swell of emotions, the implications of the language as aching to all as they are personal to the characters. Hester is warned of passion, that it “always leads to something ugly.” For Davies, it seems to always lead to something great.
The Deep Blue Sea
R
Three-and-a-half reels out of four
Opens tomorrow at the Ritz East
Recommended Rental
Shame
NC-17
Available Tuesday
Though “Shame” is, in many ways, a wasted opportunity (a film that fails to be a definitive account of crippling sex addiction), it is unmissable for Michael Fassbender’s wrenching performance, notable for reasons well beyond what he famously reveals. Following up his masterpiece, “Hunger,” director Steve McQueen shows his fallibility, but he also shows that his relationship with his male muse is one that’s consistently worth watching.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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