The king of the erotic thriller is back
Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne returns to sex, lies and homicide with Deep Water
ADRIAN LYNE, THE undisputed heavyweight champ of the high-end erotic thriller, hasn’t made a film since 2002’s Unfaithful. The director of 9 ½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction has been coming up with shadowy stories in sunnier climes.
“I spent a lot of time in Provence,” he says simply. “I was working there but it’s a difficult, seductive place to leave.”
The film that’s brought him back, Deep Water, is Lyne back in his wheelhouse, film-noir themes (lust, jealousy, obsession) relocated to desirable houses with slick visuals, mad plottwists and — most importantly — lashings of rumpy-pumpy. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, it stars Ben Affleck as uptight Victor Van Allen, who is married to free spirit Melinda (Ana de Armas). She has a roving eye and, as Lyne puts it, “There’s a complicity between them, just in the way she’s involving him in her infidelity.” For the director, it pushes the envelope further than his previous potboilers.
“I think this is more complex and interesting,” he says. “Highsmith writes strange pieces about people on the fringe. In a bizarre way, I think it is a twisted love story.”
Lyne took an intimate approach to ensuring that Affleck and de Armas — who became romantically involved as a result of the film but have since parted ways — were the right match for his combustible leading couple. “I tested [Ana] with Ben in my house. It’s more fun to do it that way, it feels a bit more real,” he explains. The director says that he was instantly taken with their chemistry. “There was banter between them; [it was] flirtatious but angry.”
Yet in spite of his proven track record, Lyne says that he still comes up against studio suits trying to iron out the kinks. “It’s always the bumps that are the most interesting,” he suggests. “With this movie, hanging onto the lunacy was tough. Happily, I think I managed it.” Deep Water retains all the hallmarks of his genre-defining erotic thrillers but he quibbles with the emphasis on “erotic”.
“I always find it difficult to detach the sex from the rest of it,” he says. “People endlessly talk about the fucking over the basin in Fatal Attraction. I just always like relationship pieces, things about you and me.” Whatever he calls them, let’s hope we don’t have to wait 20 years for the next one
DEEP WATER IS ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO FROM 18 MARCH