Deep Water Review

Patricia Highsmith's 1957 novel "Deep Water" was published five years before Edward Albee unleashed George and Martha on the world, terrorizing social customs with a game of Get the Guests. Her book created a couple so toxic it took Hollywood six and a half decades to reimagine them.

After one producer told Highsmith that Vic and Melinda Van Allen were too psychopathic for the screen, the only director to take on their miserable marriage committed suicide after reading a draft of her script. Never a people person, Highsmith grumbled that the dead man owed her $12,000.

"Deep Water" is out this week on DVD and Blu-ray. It's a romantic thriller by erotic thriller guru Adrian Lyne, although it's been nine years since the now 81-year-old "Fatal Attraction" director first announced that he was going to direct it.

The hilarious potboiler "Deep Water" is set in New Orleans, that city humming with menace despite the film's chilling blue cinematography and coldly erotic score by Mr. Lyne. In the filmmaker's opinion, sex should be put back in cinemas or, at least, streamed on Hulu.

In these days when actors have gotten accustomed to hiding their hormones beneath superhero costumes, will Mr. Lyne once more make titillation mainstream? As proof of that, he casts Ben Affleck, who is no stranger to comic-book movies, alongside Ana de Armas as Vic and Melinda, Van Allens are a wealthy couple who are the center of scandal among their hard-partying friends.

Nearly every night, they leave their neglected 6-year-old to a babysitter to attend a soiree or dinner. Almost every event ends with Melinda in a drunken clinch with a young man, and Vic quietly insists he doesn't mind his wife's canoodling.

Vic frames himself as an evolved man too far away from base jealousy. His wife, Melinda, amplifies the contrast with her acting like a cheetah racing across the savannah, a physical marvel delighted by the power of her body in motion.

Highsmith saw him as a self-important egotist who does not disagree when friends call him a saint. Vic does not like the fact that Melinda gravitates to a bunch of dimwits like Joel Dash who, when asked if Vic feels stifled, cannot even pronounce the word.

It must be possible for his wife to find a lover that suits his social standing instead of her invasion of hydra-headed idiots. Vic has made millions from a computer chip used to build military drones, allowing him to retire early and devote his time to a vanity magazine named Xenophon, after the Greek philosopher and warrior.

The author identified with Vic's fight against milquetoast mediocrity. She even gave the character a pet snail as a lifelong hobby. Mr. Lyne tenderly captures wet eyelashes rippling across Mr. Affleck's finger. Unfortunately, Vic's narcissist tendencies are too cerebral for screenwriters Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, who reduce him to a clenched-jawed cuckold roiling with sexual frustration. By trading off Vic's interest for comic relief, he becomes more relatable. He gives Vic a fake smile and passive-aggression sharpened to a dagger in place of self-deluded inner monologues.

He amuses the audience with petty bits of vengeance, like inviting one of Melinda's dates to dinner and pretending to be unaware of his shellfish allergy. ("I made lobster bisque," Vic says.) As a prank, Vic tells one gullible rival that he bludgeoned Melinda's last boyfriend to death with a hammer. His boast becomes a rumor-and a sticky rumor can become a truth.

What does it matter if Vic killed a man-how dare his wife embarrass him with that piano player?

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