Deep Water
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Written by Zach Helm, Sam Levinson
Starring Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas
Release Date March 18th, 2o22
Hey, you know who doesn’t need a comeback right now? Director Adrian Lyne. No time in our collective popular culture could be any less suited for the kind of sleazy, sexist, trope heavy sex thriller that Lyne specialized in in the 1980s. While his Fatal Attraction is certainly an unforgettable movie, it was also an ugly, misogynistic, chauvinistic, sleazefest that blamed men’s infidelity on these predatory women always out to turn good men into cheaters.
In Lyne’s anachronistic worldview, men are slaves to their libido and women are eager con-artists aiming to use sexual pleasure to control the minds and wallets of powerful men. Don’t be mistaken, there is plenty of room for villainous female characters but you have to make their villainy specific and the character memorable, just as you would for a male character, oddly enough, for that kind of thing to not feel like some sexist fantasy of good men and evil women.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.
