Deep End

This was one of the most influential movies in my life, awakened me to many things including the beauty of good camera-work and multi-layered scripting. A seemingly simple 'coming-of-age' story, highly sexually charged and with deeply significant climax. Why is it impossible to get a copy in the UK of this UK movie, when it seems it is also shown a lot on TV in other countries, yet never in the UK! Crazy! This seems to be just another example of how we Brits constantly put ourselves down, forget about our good work which influences others and are generally our own worst enemies! I guess I have to make a trip to Canada to buy a copy......... and a DVD that will play it!:¬)()

The road to hell is paved with comic situations. This film doesn't seem acted at all, it's more like setting up a camera while things happen, which enhances the atmosphere of aloofness. The actors seem free to improvise - that may or may not really be the case, but their acting seems free of constraint. The blue of the pool, the yellow raincoat and the red paint that spills in the end remind me of Godard's Contempt (1963) which also has a similar plot and ending - it's focused on rejection. The boy actor reminds me of the young Roman Polanski and Jane Asher still looks like a teenager, so her character's immaturity doesn't come across as weird. Legal age doesn't make people mature anyway - that's the point that Diana Dors demonstrates so well while smothering the boy. Now, the question remains - did they really need Burt Kwouk in this film just to sell hot dogs?

If you can imagine that this is your brief to make a film that must contain all of 1-4. 1)A sleazy swimming baths and steaming wash rooms. 2)A young woman swimming bath attendant and a young boy swimming bath attendant who are the principal characters. 3)Various other characters who visit the swimming baths. 4)Obsessional love. So from the list above an exceptional film must be made. It must hold your attention throughout. It must be fresh; never sluggish. It must have superb camera work. The principal characters must be void of cliché dialogue - and this is the hard part - use ABSOLUTE naturalistic dialogue - or improvised? If you think you can do it better than the above film then please do so. If not then watch 'Deep End'. Not only did I enjoy this film immensely but fell deeply in love (if you'll pardon the pun) with Jane Asher.

West German production, set in England and filmed both there and in Germany, concerns excruciatingly vapid 15-year-old boy who gets his first job working as an attendant at a community bathhouse. He wards off the advances of the peculiar clientèle while his flirtatious relationship with a jaded female co-worker takes several wrong turns. Director and co-writer Jerzy Skolimowski sets up a workaday atmosphere which feels awfully exact, although in a dreary, mildewed vein. It should be a disarming portrait of some kind, but these kids are not alienated, nor rebellious, nor avant garde. They don't seem to have much interest in anything except creating friction (resulting in lots of bare breasts and bums). Skolimowski is achingly precise in his detail--and yet his jaundiced style is really the whole picture. The characters are not likable, while the ensuing tragedy (however shocking) is rendered ridiculous when filtered through the filmmaker's off-putting pretensions. *1/2 from ****

Deep End, along with The House That Screamed, has immortalized John Moulder-Brown in my memory. I saw Deep End but twice ... once on its first release and a couple of years later in Copenhagen, but it is a unique movie which sticks in the memory and cannot be forgotten. With the advent of DVD, surely a company like Anchor Bay should resurrect this engrossing drama. Jane Asher is terrific. And former beauty Diana Dors is a hoot in her cameo appearance. Deep End remains three decades later one of my all-time favorite films.