DEEP WATER (1981)
"Do You Know People Talk About You?"
Deep Water (1957) by Patricia Highsmith
Eaux profondes (1981) by Michel Deville
"It was as if she wore a label, "My Enemy," in his mind, and his enemy she was, beyond the reach of reason or imagination of change. The wraithlike antagonism in his mind found an imaginary grip and tightened."
-Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water (1957)
Filmmaker Michel Deville, aged 89 at the time of this writing, may have run parallel with the French New Wave, but the same sort of contemporaneous critical appreciation or subsequent reappraisals have thus far eluded him. This seems about right. Instead, Deville's parade of light comedies, ornate costume pieces, and stray crime dramas throughout the sixties and seventies were met with a sporadic but broad commercial appeal. (When they were met at all.) There were even awards for his efforts - Raphael, or The Debauched One (1971) was nominated for a Palme d'Or, and Césars generously bestowed for Best Writing (in 1978, for Dossier 51) and Best Director (in 1985, for Death in a French Garden). Smack in the middle of such items is the uncharacteristic Deep Water, a mostly faithful (at least on plot level) Patricia Highsmith adaptation. It seems to have come and gone without a trace and, like the rest of Deville's output, doesn't have much of a reputation today (although it was momentarily resurrected on MUBI). This despite a noteworthy cast (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert) and based on a suspense novel written by the famously cantankerous, alcoholic author with a consistently adaptable track record, a writer whose innate understanding (a little too well) for socially maladjusted and psychologically fucked-up characters fascinated as diverse a list of filmmakers: Wim Wenders, Claude Chabrol, Anthony Minghella, Roger Spottiswoode, Todd Haynes, and Danny DeVito.
Deville makes a run at interrogating the aberrational behavior of a middle-aged married man (Trintignant) named Victor Van Allen, purveyor of small batched perfume in the film, sole overseer of a boutique publishing house in the novel. (In both, a man of great inherited wealth.) Deville's film is co-scripted by Christopher Frank and Florence Delay, the daughter of French psychiatrist/neurologist Jean Delay and also - interestingly - Robert Bresson's Joan of Arc, from the 1962 film. But any of the debased characters' darker reserves from the Highsmith are beyond their capabilities and, also, perhaps outside the actorly grasp of a consummately suave Trintignant. Instead, Deville's film maintains the quality of a pulse-raising made-for-television thriller from the '70s - say, one directed by John Badham; stripped of some of the more emotionally combustible energy layered surreptitiously inside of Highsmith's 1957 book, one which contains another of her impertinent, deranged figures who possess a real streak of unearned superiority towards others in their close-knit haute communities.
As Fiona Peters puts in Anxiety and Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith (Routledge; 2016), Highsmith's texts are "never 'about' solving a puzzle, feeding the reader with clues at apposite intervals or allowing a reader to engage in amateur detective… they are, like their creator, recalcitrant and unyielding." Highsmith and her literary creations - character studies of the psychologically sick who act out with shockingly murderous overreactions - are intrinsically linked.
"She had as much as said it that night of the party. 'You're like somebody waiting very patiently and one day—you'll do something'. He remembered the exact words and how he had smiled at their mildness."
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert may have played father and daughter in Michael Haneke's celebrated Amour (2012), but in 1981, apparently, they could make a passable May-September romance. The opening scene of Deep Water - in both the original 1957 novel and Deville's 1981 adaptation - focuses on a quietly judgmental Van Allen (Trintignant) as he's consumed with spying on the dance floor actions of his wife - Melinda in the novel, Mélanie (Huppert) in the film. She remains in the flirtatious hands of a man who is not her husband. In time, this will be revealed to not be an unusual set of circumstances; there's an unspoken arrangement between husband/wife that the wife can tacitly pursue other men in their social stratosphere and bring them home. Victor will even spend time in their company despite clearly not being completely OK with the scenario. Vic is curiously addicted to keeping tabs. He internalizes the emotions that stir up inside him in the form of pithy passive-aggressive rebukes. Still, he insists on keeping the company of his wife and her lovers, the irrational behavior akin to placing your tongue over a sore tooth and being masochistically addicted to the momentarily uncomfortable sensation. When a man briefly obscures his view at the opening party, he asks the partygoer to move aside. Huppert as Mélanie, in a medium shot, catches his eye and then bites her lip in ecstasy, the duo deriving an unspoken perverse pleasure, together but separate.
The depiction of the idle class resides near New York in the Highsmith original but is transposed to a small seaside area in the film: Jersey, UK, former sovereign state of the United Kingdom and geographically close to Normandy, France. (I say one-time as it's no longer the case due to the recent changes in the European union; now, for instance, EU fishing boats with a track record need to apply for permits to conduct their regular business.) Jersey, UK appears to be suitably quaint and appropriate for a story where a semi-isolated couple - plus their small child - receive frequent business visitors to coincide with a lively social calendar. The events depicted are held frequently and always heavy on the alcohol. During the occasions, Vic switches in a bi-polar fashion between demurely sullen to impudent no matter the interlocutor, whether it's a pleasant, attractive young woman (Sylvie Orcier) alluding to possible romantic interest or a drunk, unkempt man interested in casual sex with his wife. In the novel, it's no coincidence that in conversing with his daughter, Vic draws an allusion to Tiberius, the Roman emperor known for his grave moods. (In the film, its corollary will be the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, Samson fighting against the philistines, "a vulgar but powerful people", which brings Mélanie into the analogous history lesson/bedtime story for daughter Trixie while simultaneously coding what Vic thinks of himself.)
This opening party is an integral scene, and it establishes the oneupmanship nature behind the unusual married couple. Mélanie's dance partner Joël (Jean-Luc Moreau) tempts his fate by acknowledging how seductive he has been with the wife of another: "I know husbands who'd beat me up for less." Vic calls his bluff: "When I really dislike somebody, I kill them." (It's here that Trintignant stares at the camera in an almost comically diabolical breaking-the-fourth-wall fashion.) It's a spoken symbol of things to come, but it is Vic's first step in actualizing his darker impulses and clawing back some of his compromised masculinity: he will lie and boastfully take credit for the murder of Malcolm McRae, a former acquaintance of his wife. This sets Vic off on a path where he'll commit two more murders, one unintentionally and another unequivocally premeditated.
At home, Huppert will disrobe and reveal her body in a master that's reminiscent of Nicole Kidman's blasé nudity in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. It was here that I first thought of it as a possible progenitor, as it covers a messy, private discussion spent between husband and wife after supposed improprieties and social embarrassment. The husband is then forced to confront the idea that he's woefully insufficient as a partner and, yes, impotent. But of course, in Deep Water, Vic had arrived at this point previously on the timeline. Mélanie not being monogamous is a well-worn pair of shoes for him.
"The shit is going to hit the fan," says Beatrice (Trixie), Vic and Mélanie's grade-school-aged daughter, concerning her mother's frequent guests. And it's her that is the voice of reason for both audience and for Vic, spelling out the transparent in the conjugal relationship and its transgressions. Trixie will later claim to know that she believes her father has drowned her mother's former lover, mentioning such barbarous, blood-lust activities in a calming, matter-of-fact way. Children can always tell.
Mélanie sees that Joël, her partner from the previous night's festivities, can visit; she springs the news onto Vic. In a further sign of Vic's domestication, he's the cook for the evening, greeting Joël in Deville's only time-cut (and rare bit of style) to reveal him in an apron. But Joël is still freaked out about Vic's supposed history of murder. He departs. But as Mélanie is played by Isabelle Huppert, it's not a stretch that she has another man - Ralph (Robin Renucci) - on the leash and available for a possible tryst, despite the awkwardness of a husband in the room. (To be clear, in both Highsmith/Deville, there is not an incidence of explicit sex - it is all deduced.) Once Ralph has settled in, Deville opts for an ostentatious deep-focus shot with the three in the room - it (simple-mindedly) illustrates the enormous emotional distance between Mélanie/Ralph and Vic, who is in the room but playing a game of chess. In trite, obvious dialogue not contained in the novel, once his game's over, and Ralph feels his welcome is worn, Mélanie asks him, "Aren't you playing anymore?" Vic casually answers: "I won."
Ralph smashes through any of Vic's conceits by asking, "Do you know people talk about you?" To quote Rainer Werner Fassbinder, it could be here where Vic decides to "escape from the jungle of an honorable existence and penetrates the free and beautiful world of madness."
"Two bedbugs were crawling around on their piece of mattress, looking for flesh and blood, but he was not in the mood to offer his hand tonight, and the two dragged their flat bodies off slowly in search of cover from his flashlight beam."
It's arguably tired common knowledge by now that Patricia Highsmith harbored a longtime fascination with gastropods and their lovemaking. These are the troubled, anti-social behavioral patterns that biographers of Highsmith must reference, like the long-standing anecdote of her bringing hundreds of snails in her handbag to a party, not unlike the kind Vic/Mélanie frequent, and insisting they were her company for the evening. In Deep Water, Vic maintains a detachable garage and separate existence from his residence shared with Mélanie. In it, he lords over three aquaria of land snails and bed bugs, studying their mating rituals and rate of reproduction with considerable intensity. Evidently, there's a long drawn-out courtship process - maybe mirroring Vic's observing his wife with other men in similar modes - before the "cup-shaped excrescences start to appear on the right side of both snails' heads" and "the glutinous cups (grow) larger and touch, rim to rim" forming darts; their embrace can sometimes last for over an hour. Highsmith writes about such creatures with enthusiasm not reserved for the disturbing, crass humans: "How they did adore each other, and how perfect they were together." But when one of Mélanie's lovers insists they cook up the snails, Vic uncharacteristically snaps to shout in no uncertain terms that escargot won't be on the menu. In the film, Mélanie will pick up the slugs, hum a tune while taunting "War is declared"; but in the Highsmith novel, it's a silent war of attrition between the two, not one of outsized grand gestures or declarative statements. Months pass, not a matter of days or weeks.
Fiona Peters again: "Vic, as I have shown, utilizes the snails as a mode of distanciation, blocking out the noise of his crumbling universe. Like an addiction, the dependency on the tranquillity of the snails' mating increases as the novel progresses, reaching its peak when he realises he has made a foolish mistake during one of his murders."
The novel was to be called The Dog in the Manger. Highsmith began notes on the project as early as 1950, the aim to focus on the "sniping, griping, ambushing" that can transpire between a married couple; "a ballet of the wearing of the nerves" with "repressed emotions (that) can become schizophrenic" and how through an "unnatural abstinence, evil things arise." (Andrew Wilson, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, 2003).
Carlos is Mélanie's new boyfriend, and he plays piano at the Grand Hotel. (In the novel, his name is Charley De Lisle.) Vic spies on him, and when there's a costume party, Mélanie invites Carlos. Vic insists that she "can go as Lady Chatterly, a lady who had sex with a servant." Insulting the company Mélanie keeps and attempting to embarrass her for cavorting with lower classes is all that Vic has left. Instead, she dresses as Cleopatra. At a pool party, Mélanie escapes with Carlos into a bathroom to change into suitable swimming gear. Vic notices, and as soon as he is coincidentally alone with Carlos, there is an incident - "as if a joke's gone bad" - as Vic finds himself holding Carlos' head down underneath the water until he drowns.
"Vic looked around the lawn, at the house, the terrace. He saw no one, but he suddenly realized—almost objectively, with no sense of shock—that he hadn't made absolutely sure that there had been no one on the terrace or on the lawn before he pulled De Lisle under. He still held the faintly buoyant shoulders under, not really able to believe yet that he was dead or even completely unconscious."
Another boyfriend appears on the margins but begins to appear with more frequency: Tony Cameron, a surveyor. But Vic lives in a delusional state where his wife can't possibly be physical with another man, despite all appearances to the contrary. From the Highsmith novel.
"Vic reminded himself that Cameron probably wasn't having anything to do with Melinda—physically speaking. He really believed that. But it didn't help. And as he sat there in his room after they had left, trying to compose himself so that he could read, he almost regretted that he had been so childish as to refuse to go to the Mellers'. He could still go, he thought. But that seemed more childish now. No, he would not go."
This third murder is premeditated. Vic will venture off to a quarry and dispatch Cameron after running into him quite by happenstance. In the Highsmith, Mélanie will play mind games until Vic is forced into a corner. Realizing he has no recourse with the law, he commits the final act of strangling his wife. As police cars approach and Don Wilson, an ineffectual pulp writer, pounces, but Vic cannot help himself from being his judgmental self even when his time has run out:
"Vic kept looking at Wilson's wagging jaw and thinking of the multitude of people like him on the earth, perhaps half the people on earth were of his type, or potentially his type, and thinking that it was not bad at all to be leaving them. The ugly birds without wings. The mediocre who perpetuated mediocrity, who really fought and died for it. He smiled at Wilson's grim, resentful, the-world-owes-me-a-living face, which was the reflection of the small, dull mind behind it, and Vic cursed it and all it stood for. Silently, and with a smile, and with all that was left of him, he cursed it.”
This is a very Highsmith point-of-view - it almost reads like parody.
But Highsmith's parting glance was not to be translated to film - Deville closes proceedings with something of a happy ending fitting Deville's translation being glossy and desultory but eliding the sweet sickness to be found in Highsmith’s prose. Again, somewhat mirroring Eyes Wide Shut, there's a loaded if an oblique response from Mélanie in the final moments near the water, suggestions of a potentially happy reunion. After staring at her husband and contemplating all that has passed, he asks her what they'll do next; her answer - “let’s go home” - serves the same purpose if not the same galvanizing weight as Nicole Kidman’s one-word line to close the Kubrick, in response to the same question and to Tom Cruise: to “fuck”.
