Rachel Weisz makes this tightly controlled romance hurt, with strong support from Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russell Beale. The music occasionally presses too hard, but the sympathy for a woman wanting more from life is worth the discomfort.
Terence Davies makes The Deep Blue Sea a moving romance, though his care over every image sometimes makes distress look too carefully arranged. His screenplay lets memories interrupt Hester Collyer’s present, gradually showing why neither her husband nor her lover can give her the life she wants. The patience matters, because a brisker account of this triangle could leave her looking merely indecisive. We have time to understand the attraction, the disappointment and the difficulty of knowing what to do when understanding changes nothing.
Rachel Weisz gives Hester an intelligence that makes her helplessness in love especially painful: she can understand her predicament without being able to bear it. There is pride in the performance, too, which prevents the character becoming someone we are simply invited to pity. Tom Hiddleston makes Freddie Page’s volatility credible, although the film gives us less access to his feelings than to hers. As Sir William Collyer, Simon Russell Beale brings enough kindness to the husband that Hester’s dissatisfaction cannot be explained away by making him a brute. All three performances allow affection and hurt to exist together.
Florian Hoffmeister photographs post-war London through brown haze and deep interior shadows, making the lack of light feel wearing rather than romantic. James Merifield’s production design sets the rooms within a city still bearing bomb damage; the unhappiness belongs somewhere recognisable. The surroundings help explain why a promise of pleasure might carry such weight for Hester. Occasionally, though, the gloom becomes so consistent that separate scenes feel too alike, and the period detail begins to keep the people at a distance.
David Charap’s editing keeps the shifts between past and present fluid enough that the memories feel prompted by Hester’s distress. We are asked to follow her attention, and the cutting generally makes that easy without requiring a spoken explanation. Samuel Barber’s music carries the opening passage with a sweep that announces how seriously the film takes her longing. The violin can be less helpful when it insists on feelings already clear in the acting. At those points, a quieter soundtrack would give the performances more room.
We were moved by the pub singalongs, because hearing people sing together makes Hester’s isolation feel more painful. The songs make it easy to understand why someone would want to stay among these people for another drink. They also give the film a welcome everyday sound after the force of the orchestral music. It is a relief to hear human voices occupying these sombre surroundings, and the scenes let us feel the appeal of company without pretending that company will solve her troubles.
As a romantic melodrama, the film asks us to accept that wanting someone can become the central fact of a life. That narrow focus will frustrate anyone looking for more of the world outside the relationship, and the deliberate pace sometimes makes 98 minutes feel longer. Yet the actors keep finding ordinary human awkwardness inside the formal exchanges, and we never lost interest in Hester. See it for the way Rachel Weisz allows her to remain difficult, clear-sighted and deserving of tenderness at once.
