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The Deep End of the Ocean
USA 1999
Reviewed by Charlotte O'Sullivan
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Contented wife, mother and career woman Beth Cappadora takes her three children - baby Kerry, toddler Ben and six-year-old Vincent - to an out-of-town high-school reunion. Arriving at the hotel, she goes to reception, leaving Ben in Vincent's care. When she returns, Ben has disappeared. The police investigate but Ben is nowhere to be found. The family returns home. Beth becomes depressed, losing interest in her career as a photographer and arguing incessantly with her husband Pat.
Nine years pass and the Cappadoras move to Chicago. One day a boy comes to mow their lawn, calling himself Sam. Beth is sure it's Ben and begins photographing him. Using the pictures as evidence, she convinces the police of his identity. Beth confronts Sam's adoptive father. It turns out Beth's barren, mentally unstable school friend Cecil Lockhart stole Ben at the reunion and later killed herself. Vincent is hostile to Sam. After a few nights with the Cappadoras, a miserable Sam runs back home. Vincent becomes increasingly rebellious and ends up in prison. Sam pays a visit and the brothers bond. A few days later, Sam returns to the Cappadoras.
Review
Compare and contrast Todd Haynes' Safe with The Deep End of the Ocean, directed by Ulu Grosbard (last film Georgia). The titles alone are instructive - the one concise and resonant, the other ungainly and presumptuous. Both are concerned with miserable suburban women unable to cope with 'normal' life. But where Safe is a pastiche of the crisis-of-the-week television movie, Deep End is an inflated version of it.
Critics have dubbed Michelle Pfeiffer's performance here "unvain", but as in A Thousand Acres, her grim ordinariness comes vacuum packed, somehow more plastic than her glamorous turns in other films. But it's the script (based on Jacquelyn Mitchard's bestseller) which is most disappointing. We spend forever gazing at Beth's beautiful drawn face, but never crawl beneath its skin. At one point we learn that Beth has no family - an enticing discovery, given that this is a film all about the importance of family - but this goes unexplored.
Beth's emotional present is as inscrutable as her past. Husband Pat wants a perfect, golden family and to be envied (and what is the kidnapping, but the ultimate compliment: I want what you have). But why does Beth take all her kids to the reunion if not to show them off? Unfortunately, her insecurities are not what this film is interested in. Beth's reactions are always understandable (in other words uncontroversial). She's impeccably behaved, never once suspecting any of her school friends of the crime. Her relationship with her best friend consists simply of supportive hugs, ditto her friendship with gratuitously wacky policewoman Candy. This is blandness as a virtue. When Beth begins to take furtive photographs of Sam (who may be her lost son) you wonder in vain if finally a little Don't Look Now weirdness is going to be allowed to seep in.
Beth is a woman in a plastic panic bubble, but the film doesn't make us feel that panic so we also can't tell the difference when she emerges from it. Sam tries to escape his 'real' family and Beth supports him, unlike rigid, patriarchal Pat. We're supposed to realise Beth has learned selflessness through her ordeal, but she just seems more of a Stepford wife than ever, the family's blank conscience and anchor. Presenting itself as feminist, 90s critique of the sunny 50s ideal, Deep End merely rams the old messages home: mom, put those kids first; dad, when it comes to the domestic sphere, mom knows best. Meanwhile, to the soupiest of scores, characters meet emotional hurdles with such lines as: "You don't get to be ready for this."
Luckily, this is a film of two halves. The clue comes early on, when we see little Vincent rushing to pinch his baby sister, knowing that her squeal will interrupt his parents' row. Such diagonal abuse blossoms when Ben eventually returns to the family home, with sibling rivalry at last providing a form of envy we can believe in and, more to the point, care about. Ryan Merriman is marvellous as Sam, the golden toddler now tarnished a dull bronze by age. Stolid, diffident, he has none of the charisma of long-limbed Vincent.
What the film captures so well, however, is that their roles remain the same - Sam effortlessly (unwillingly) drifting centre stage. You dread the brothers' inevitable bonding scene, but when it comes - with Vincent revealing that at the hotel he told his brother to "get lost" - you can smell the musty grief. We know that Sam's going to forgive him, but thanks to Jonathan Jackson's fine acting, it's not clear that Vincent does. As he receives his absolution, years tumble off his face. Sam, though, looks more wizened than ever. Sam's loss isn't smoothed away. He talks repeatedly of his love for his "mad" adoptive mother and you can feel her memory winding its way through his bloodstream. Before it all ends in a mushy game of basketball, you can almost believe in the danger of these lives. Todd Haynes, I'm sure, would approve.
Credits
- Producers
- Kate Guinzburg
- Steve Nicolaides
- Screenplay
- Stephen Schiff
- Based on the book by
- Jacquelyn Mitchard
- Director of Photography
- Stephen Goldblatt
- Editor
- John Bloom
- Production Designer
- Dan Davis
- Music
- Elmer Bernstein
- ©Mandalay Entertainment.
- Production Companies
- Mandalay Entertainment presents
- a Via Rosa production
- Executive Producer
- Frank Capra III
- Production Co-ordinator
- Kris Fullan Martinez
- Unit Production Manager
- James R. Dyer
- Location Manager
- Michael Leon
- Post-production Supervisor
- Nancy Kirhoffer
- Assistant Directors
- Frank Capra III
- George Bamber
- David Hyman
- Script Supervisor
- Luca Kouimelis
- Casting
- Lora Kennedy
- Associate:
- Kristy Sager
- ADR:
- Sondra James
- Camera Operators
- Ray De La Motte
- Mark R. Van Loon
- Steadicam Operator
- Mark R. Van Loon
- Special Effects Coordinator
- Joe Ramsey
- Special Effects
- Steven Jensen
- Joseph L.E. Chenier III
- Associate Editor
- Antonia Van Drimmelen
- Art Director
- Philip Toolin
- Set Designers
- Barbara Mesney
- Mark Poll
- Carl Stensel
- Set Decorator
- Stephanie Ziemer
- Photographs
- Anne Fishbein
- Storyboard Artist
- John Coven
- Costume Designer
- Susie DeSanto
- Key Costumer
- Susan Kistler
- Costumer
- Deborah A. Hall
- Set Costumer
- Dennis McCarthy
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Eileen Sieff Stroup
- Make-up
- Michael Germain
- Hair
- Department Head:
- K.G. Ramsey
- Stylists:
- Candace Neal
- Julia Walker
- Titles
- Balsmeyer & Everett, Inc
- Orchestrations
- Emilie A. Bernstein
- Music Editor
- Kathy Durning
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Dan Wallin
- Music Consultant
- Budd Carr
- Soundtrack
- "Energy" by Michael Knott, performed by Bomb Bay Babies; "Zorba's Dance" by Mikis Theodorakis
- Sound Mixer
- Petur Hliddal
- Re-recording Mixer
- Lee Dichter
- Recordist
- Harry Higgins
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Ron Bochar
- Dialogue Editors
- Philip Stockton
- Nicolas Renbeck
- Sound Effects Editor
- Lewis Goldstein
- ADR
- Editor:
- Gina R. Alfano
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Jennifer Ralston
- Artist:
- Marco Costanzo
- Editors:
- Frank Kern
- Kam Chan
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Allan Graf
- Mickey Giacomazzi
- Cast
- Michelle Pfeiffer
- Beth Cappadora
- Treat Williams
- Pat Cappadora
- Jonathan Jackson
- Vincent Cappadora, aged 16
- John Kapelos
- George Karras
- Ryan Merriman
- Sam
- Tony Musante
- Angelo
- Rose Gregorio
- Rosie
- Lucinda Jenney
- Laurie
- Cory Buck
- Vincent Cappadora, aged 7
- John Roselius
- Bastokovich
- Brenda Strong
- Ellen
- K.K. Dodds
- Theresa
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Candy Bliss
- Alexa Vega
- Kerry Cappadora, aged 9
- Michael McGrady
- Jimmy Daugherty
- Michael McElroy
- Ben Cappadora
- Joey Simmrin
- Schaffer
- Holly Towne
- Martha
- Maryanne Summers
- Cecil Lockhart
- Susie Spear
- Lisa Maris
- cheerleaders
- Daniel Hagen
- hotel manager
- McNally Sagal
- woman cop
- Robert Cicchini
- Joey
- Frank Marocco
- bandleader
- Alison McMillan
- desk clerk
- Stephanie Feury
- waitress
- Wayne Duvall
- McGuire
- Father Gerald McSorley
- Father Cleary
- Mickey Swenson
- cop Tommy/cop 1
- Todd Jeffries
- cop Ricky
- Steve Ireland
- Scott William McKinlay
- Wylie Small
- Ana Gabriel
- Nancy Sullivan
- Timothy Davis-Reed
- Robert Clotworthy
- reporters
- Ken Magee
- cop 2
- Van Epperson
- guard
- Jennifer Reznikoff
- waitress
- Ron Von Gober
- police officer
- Steve Blalock
- Mike Watson
- ND cops
- Robert 'Bobby Z' Zajonc
- helicopter pilot
- Jim James
- Emidio Antonio
- Patricia M. Leahy
- zoo employees
- Pete Sutton
- community centre volunteer
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 9,738 feet
- 108 minutes 13 seconds
- SDDS/Dolby
- Colour/Prints by Technicolor