Wednesday 7 December 2011

Review: Film

The deep blue sea, Terrence Rattigan, dir Terrence Davies, Rachel Weisz, Simon Russell Beale, Tom Hiddleston

Moody. Ex-fighter pilot Freddie lives in an older world. He finds it hard to adjust: he drinks and brawls his way through life. Hester falls for him with a passion which consumes her, while married to Judge, Sir William Collyer, who is increasingly out of his depth. The film begins with an attempted suicide. While the presence of death, destruction, is never far from the surface throughout. For the most part the film is believable: the period is meticulously evoked, with fly- on-the-wall camera-work - a Davies’ trope - together with pub sing-songs, and the absence of emotional underscored music, showing a gritty, grainy post-war London. As a result, The Deep Blue Sea is bleak, muted: too much so. The passion between the leads' shared screen-time, despite the artistic entanglement of bodies, kindles rather than fires. With moments from zero to sixty driven rather than realistic……..It looks good, though, if heavily-laden.......and Simon Russell-Beale triumphs……….

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