I can’t figure out why director Terence Davies thought it
necessary to adapt The Deep Blue Sea,
the 1952 Terence Rattigan play about an extra-marital love affair in post-war
London, to the screen again. It was done once with Vivien Leigh in the starring
role in 1955 and, though I haven’t seen it, I would bet that it’s a much better
production, if only because it fits its time period. Davies’ version, which
stars Rachel Weisz, does nothing to update the material or to break it free of
its period constraints, both in terms of subject matter and film style. This is
a movie that moves as slow as molasses on a cool day. For a story about a woman
desperately in love with a man whose ardor has cooled, it just feels stilted
and wrong.
