In my research as I’ve begun to work on my last two posts, I’ve come across at least some comparison between both The Heartbreak Kid (1972; #97) and Deep End (1970) to The Graduate (1967). Throw in the fact that before that I reviewed Dusan Makavejev’s W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) and it’s understandable that I might claim 1967 through 1972 to be the most sex-obsessed time in the history of cinema. Of course such a claim is almost completely unfounded, as cinema has always held a fascination with sex, but you could see how I might get that idea considering the subject matter of Deep End. Culturally, views about sex were rapidly changing at this time and this film seems to be one aimed almost directly at the young, male, pre-“Dark Side of the Moon” Pink Floyd fan set that was “concerned” with such changes.
Deep End, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, follows the young Mike (John Moulder-Brown), a fifteen year-old who’s just left school. He finds work in an East London public bathhouse, but his attention is more fixated on the spunky Susan (Jane Asher), who shows him the ropes, than on his attendant duties. She informs him early on that he’s likely to garner some tips from older women looking to use their imaginations, and that she’ll gladly float him any such customers. Somehow it takes Mike longer than it should to realize that Susan supplements her income in the same fashion, with a little extra thrown in from time to time. When the two discuss sex she pegs him for the virgin that he is, but is kind and doesn’t embarrass him.
Mike tries to act courageous around Susan, getting in fights at the bathhouse pool, but he’s put off when he sees her necking with a customer during a break. He seems to suffer from a hint of that same condition Ebert finds in all of Scorsese’s work, Freud’s Madonna/Whore complex. He’s appalled by the fact that she’s having sex with several men, especially after she tells him that she’s engaged, but he wouldn’t be quite so offended if she were having sex with him. He’s turned on when he thinks of her in that way, but turned off by the fact that she enjoys it. Moreover, it seems to Mike that she likes torturing him by flaunting her promiscuity. For a time it begins to haunt him, and he takes to following Susan and her fiancé out to the seedy club and porno theatre district. London swings in this film in a way that few others of the period portray. In a memorable sequence Mike hides from police and a strip club’s owner, having stolen a life-sized cardboard cutout of what appears to be a scantily clad Susan from the establishment’s entrance.
Confronting Susan on the Underground with the display piece, he makes a scene. After she refuses to stand for his judgments he takes the poster to the indoor pool at his work, striping down and swimming with the image of his unrequited love. Days later he turns up at a sporting event he knows is being managed by one of Susan’s lovers. Somehow he feels that by prevailing physically he can win her heart, or at least share her bed. When he approaches Susan again she’s unwilling to discuss their situation, and when she punches Mike he loses a tooth. She seems sorry for a fleeting moment until she realizes that she’s lost her engagement diamond in the struggle, dropping it into the snow. Mike tries to regain her trust by helping to find the stone, gathering up piles of the accumulation in bags to be melted and yield the small rock.
He and Susan take the bags of snow to the emptied bathhouse pool and sit in the deep end, melting kettle after kettle and straining them through her stockings, hoping to catch the diamond. What follows is an ending that combines revealed deceptions, sex, and violence in a manner other films might shy away from. Resolution is rarely neither clean nor clear when it comes to sexual deceptions and Deep End recognizes that fact boldly. Mike can never have Susan in the way he desires; she’ll never belong to him in the manner young boys dream about. Viewed retrospectively I feel that Deep End is more critical of the sexual revolution than many of its contemporaries, indeed in the same manner as The Graduate. While this film is not the masterpiece that Mike Nichols’ picture is, it does reveal the same truths; that sex can be tawdry and unforgiving, and that it always breeds obsession.
Language: English
Runtime: 88 Minutes
Available @ Youtube.com*
Grade: 3 Hats Off
*While I don’t believe this film has ever garnered major critical attention in the U.S., it’s popular enough in Southeast Asia to garner an oriental subtitled version on the net.
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