She Blogged By Night

Note: This post deals with disturbing themes and sexual content. The pics are safe for work, but the overall post may not be safe for work, for your brain, or for your spirit. You've been warned.


Jerzy Skolimowski's "Deep End" is messed up. Oh I know that sounds weak, that I should be calling it "disturbing" or "dark," but that gives the film an air of propriety that I don't think even Jerzy Skolimowski intended.


I caught "Deep End" a few minutes into it the first time it was on TCM and watched for Diana Dors, who I had already missed -- her part is early in the film. I had no idea of its history or cult status, mainly because I don't focus much on films from roughly the late 1960s to the early 1980s. There are exceptions, of course, but the more mainstream films in that time span don't do anything for me, they so often seem to be edgy for edginess' sake and lack soul. When I saw "Deep End" the first time, without having seen the beginning, I was mostly convinced that this was another example of lackluster shock film making of the era, but I wanted to see the whole film to be sure. So I caught it again the second time it was on TCM, and I confess my first impression was more cynical than it should have been.


Now, I think Skolimowski fully intended his characters in "Deep End" to be so selfish and confused that they appeared soulless. The film, however, seems to be exploring what happens when an excitable teen boy is mistreated and lost in the swinging, sexually free London of the early 1970s. Seeing the beginning, you see the roots of what young Mike has had to go through.



However, there is this undercurrent of women being out of control, of needing to be put in their place, that pisses me the fuck off. The main male characters are teenage Mike, as well as the swimming instructor and Susan's fiance. The swimming instructor is a cad who gropes his teen girl students. The fiance is bland. And that's it, that's the extent of their offensiveness. But Mike is the hero, and at the end of the film after he's played a ton of passive aggressive mind games with Susan while helping her to find the lost diamond from her engagement ring, it escalates to where she uses sex to get the diamond back. When she tries to walk off after getting the diamond, Mike kills her. She floats dead in the pool, her blood forming slo-mo ribbons around them, as he has sex with her corpse. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Keep in mind that Susan is portrayed as deserving this, because she's been an "immature tart", a jackass to Mike by saying mean things, she's a cocktease, and she may even be a whore who dances nude! It's true! So clearly she deserves to die.

And Diana Dors, sadly, is part of this anti-woman theme. She plays a 40-something woman, a little overweight, her platinum dye job going south, her cheap department-store clothes unflattering.




Mike works at a public bathhouse with Susan, and it is understood that they will each take some clients who come in for some kind of non-penetrative sexual release. Mike is 15 years old, I believe, or perhaps 16; he has quit school to go to work because his family needs the money. His first female client-in-quotation-marks is played by Diana Dors, and she, to put a fine point on it, sexually abuses him.




She gets off on shoving an unwilling Mike around, pulling his hair, and forcing his head against her breasts while she shouts some double entendre football talk. It's probably supposed to be funny; however, it's the beginning of the abuse Mike takes which ultimately leads him to murder.

"Deep End" tries to be both cult film and mainstream accessible, so it succeeds at neither. It's got all the hallmark pseudo-indie quirks of dark comedy films of the era, up to and including Cat Stevens, and I can't take it seriously. When there is an actual attempt at comedy, such as during the porn movie scene, the film is good. It's very good. When the forced wackiness and choreographed zaniness starts, it falls apart.

I know everyone loves "Deep End", more even than they love "Zabriskie Point", which is why I'm turning off comments. Between the theme of this movie and my mostly-negative reaction, the last thing I need is to get into arguments online. I mean no offense by this, it is entirely a time management technique.

However, I would like to point you all to an excellent reflection on the film here at Britmovie by D.R. Shimon. It's positive, it's insightful, and it's well worth the read.