Director: Terence Davies
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russell Beale
Running Time: 93mins

DEEP BLUE SINKS ON THE BIG SCREEN

There’s an exchange at the start of Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s stage play where unfaithful Rachel Weisz says to her cuckolded husband, ‘It’s a tragedy’. To which stage super-star Simon Russell Beale replies, ‘No, that’s such a big word. It’s just sad.”

And this is the film’s main problem – it’s not a tragedy, it’s just a bit sad.

The story of a young pretty wife who cheats on her Judge husband with a young pretty pilot, only to have him be a bit of a bastard might have been relevant and boundary pushing in the 1950’s but now it feels prudish, small and out of touch.

While it does have moments or genuine intimacy and insights into relationships that would not be out of place in a modern drama, it’s when the film’s stage roots show that it suffers.

Stage actors are allowed to be bold and brassy, vocalising their emotions to the back rows, but apply that to cinema and it feels melodramatic. Where things should be told with glances, looks and clenched jaws, they are often told with screaming speeches.

There are, however, a handful of stand-out beautiful moments in Deep Blue Sea. An uptight Tom Hiddleston trying to hold his anger at bay in a lively pub, a joke in an art gallery that’s taken in wrong way or a muted exchange in the back of a car – however, these scenes all are ruined by the inevitable burst of anger and melodrama.

You feel that maybe Davies was a bit in awe of the material. After all, not only was this one of Britain’s best-loved playwrights’ best-loved plays, but it’s also being released in the year of Rattigan’s 100th birthday. Maybe Davies felt a major reimagining, or reboot as its called these days, of the play would have been sacrilege.

Which is a shame, as with three such excellent lead actors, this would have made a great stage play.