The Deep End

The Deep End, based on the novel The Blank Wall, by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, is in the odd position of being well-cast, well-acted, well-directed, and kind of horribly written. Were it not so well-acted, in fact, it would turn almost immediately into a trite, soapy piece of trash. But Tilda Swinton’s in charge here, not the dialogue. She plays (please forgive me, but I cannot think of a better way to put this right now) a mama grizzly.
We meet Margaret Hall in a nightclub in mid-day, telling the owner, Darby (Josh Lucas, cute and creepy), to stay away from her son. The son in question (Jonathon Tucker, who should get better roles than he tends to, but this one’s good) has been spending some quality time with this club guy, when he should be concentrating on applying to colleges. So of course Darby comes to the house in the middle of the night. The house is next to a lake (Tahoe). Uh oh. But it’s not as simple as you think. Not nearly. Especially when a gorgeous blackmailer enters the picture (Goran Visnjic of ER fame). And especially when a mother makes assumptions about her family and goes to the ends of the earth to stop things from getting worse.
Questions are raised here: If you thought your child had killed someone, how far would you go to help them get away it? But what if you weren’t sure?
I wanted to love this movie. I’d been wanting to love it for 9 years. Somehow, this is when I got around to seeing it for the first time. I can’t say that I’m totally disappointed, since I’ll watch Tilda Swinton do just about anything, and she does not let me down here. But I wanted more.