In the Shallow

All play and no work kills the mood of the erotic thriller.

adrian lyne is a moralizer at heart. This may seem like a counterproductive quality for a filmmaker best known for his contributions to the erotic-thriller boom of the ’80s and ’90s, but for Lyne, the shame is inextricable from the sizzle. In 1987’s Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas nails Glenn Close against a kitchen counter—being, as she puts it, “a naughty boy”—while his wife and child are out of town, and then he gets punished when Close’s character turns out to be an obsessive stalker; in 1993’s Indecent

Proposal, Demi Moore sleeps with a wealthy Robert Redford in exchange for money that she and Woody Harrelson desperately need, a mutually agreed-on dalliance that nevertheless almost breaks

apart the couple’s previously passionate marriage; and in 2002’s Unfaithful—once thought to be Lyne’s last film—Diane Lane enlivens her suburban existence by having an affair with a dreamy Olivier Martinez, only for her doting husband, played by Richard Gere, to find out and kill the guy in a burst of rage. The sanctity of the home in Lyne’s work is constantly assailed by the allure of sordid, frantic, awesomelooking extramarital sex.

Deep Water, a half-sultry, halfstultifying adaptation of the 1957

Patricia Highsmith novel and

Lyne’s first movie in two decades, initially looks like another variation on this theme. Its marrieds, Vic (Ben Affleck) and Melinda (Ana de Armas), reside in an elegant New Orleans house with their daughter, Trixie (Grace Jenkins), and appear to lead lives of moneyed leisure. Their circle includes couples played by Lil Rel Howery, Devyn Tyler, Dash Mihok, Jade Fernandez, Tracy Letts, and Kristen Connolly, and they all own equally fabulous places and throw shindigs with live music and bartenders. For fun, Vic raises snails and rides his mountain bike out of the city. Melinda’s hobbies, on the other hand, are being the life of the party and having affairs with men whom she insists on bringing to the events she and Vic are always going to. Her latest conquest, when the movie opens, is a blissful idiot named Joel (Brendan C. Miller), who makes the mistake of assuming that Melinda and Vic have an understanding.

We’re tempted to believe the same thing given Melinda’s openness about what she’s doing and the way she meets Vic’s gaze through a window as he watches her kiss her lover. But when Joel and Vic have a moment alone, Vic lobs an idle threat his way, implying that he murdered the last man with whom Melinda had a fling. He didn’t, or at least he probably didn’t, but it’s obvious that he is not as content with the situation as he claims to be to concerned friends. What’s less evident about Vic and Melinda’s relationship is how much he is turned on by the public cuckolding. The story we’re shown, which was written by Zach Helm (of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium) and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, never creates any sense of internal coherence in its toxic main pair.

Deep Water, whose planned theatrical release presumably became a casualty of

and the Disney-Fox merger, is now an artifact of the very public and since concluded real-life romance between its leads, who share a spark onscreen in the warmthfree way two rocks struck together might. Neither is served especially well by the roles assigned to them, but they’re inarguably interesting together. Affleck, cast in a part that feels written for someone reedier and nerdier, summons his deadeyed Gone Girl affect to play the stolid Vic as someone who isn’t really seen by anyone in his life except his wife. De Armas, with her calculating eyes and bright smile, is incandescent, even when the character she’s playing seems to reinvent herself every other scene based on what will throw Vic most off balance.

Sometimes Melinda appears to really want out of her marriage and out of motherhood, two commitments that, she suggests, were Vic’s idea. Other times, she and Vic appear to have settled into a routine that, however poisonous, seems to work for them. “If you were married to anyone else, you’d be so fucking bored you’d kill yourself,” Melinda taunts after coming home late and drunk, and it’s possible she’s right, though neither apparently has any interest in talking out the dynamics of their power games or making them consensual. Their status as a couple is instead measured out in the scenes of their car rides home. When things are good, Melinda, in a gesture of practiced intimacy, retrieves a half-eaten apple from Trixie’s lunch and shares it with

Vic as he drives. When things get worse, right around the time Vic does kill one of Melinda’s lovers, they don’t even share a frame.

So, really, we’re left with an erotica lacking in thrill because the film’s stakes are never clear. Melinda isn’t worried that Vic will kill her, even when she comes to believe he has killed on her behalf. And Vic isn’t especially careful to hide his body count. The ending, which strays from the book, feels almost like a joke about Lyne’s social conservatism, except it’s played straight. For all its sloppiness, though, Deep Water offers the rare experience of watching a movie that’s decidedly grown-up. It may be set in a subtropical city, but there’s a coolness to its look, to the slightly greentinged cinematography and the unwilted crispness of its characters’ appearances, that adds a sense of distance. When Vic and Melinda get ready to go to that first party, she allows him to pick the shoes she’s going to wear and to kneel and put them on her feet. Then they disappear into the night in a flurry of perfume and promises to the babysitter, off to the unfathomable land of adults, a place so vividly realized that the film’s messy writing almost passes for psychological complexity. ■