Photo: Claire Folger/ Courtesy of 20th Century Studio
Spoilers follow for the plot of Deep Water.
Sex is integral to Patricia Highsmith’s Deep Water — or, at least, the suggestion of it. Published in 1957, the book traffics in whispers and insinuations: A locked door at a bustling costume party. Bodies that suddenly bolt upright when another figure enters the room. In director Adrian Lyne’s new filmed adaptation, though, the sex is explicit.
Here, upper-class stiff Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck) and his free-spirit wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas), are not New England WASPS, as they were in Highsmith’s novel, but a couple living leisurely in New Orleans on the money Van Allen earned in the business of drone warfare. Both versions…
