*Spoiler Alerts*
“That’s Jill’s hard luck!”
In The Deep Blue Sea, adapted for the big screen by director Terence Davies, Rachel Weisz plays Hester, the unrequited married lover of a RAF pilot, whose glory days were left on the WWII battlefield. Her dull, but comfortable married life, complete with a stuffy, emotionally conservative mother-in-law becomes—in her words, insufferable.
Which, ironically, is the same way her lover feels about her.
It’s a lushly cinematic, nostalgic post-war London film. The sad violin, the jazz singalongs in the pubs, the chain smoking, the housecoats, and the flashback to the underground bomb shelter is haunting. Hester attempts suicide out of anger, a byproduct of feeling more love for Freddie than he feels for her. The suicide is even more of a turn off for him, where he runs directly to the bar to drink with friends. Meanwhile, her scorned husband, William, returns out of genuine concern and remembers Hester’s birthday the day before. But Hester is full speed ahead for Freddie, in a role that Weisz handles solidly, and with a reserved, but fiery depth.
Essentially, it’s the story of a man loves a woman who loves a man who doesn’t love her. The endearing character of the film is Freddie and Hester’s landlady. She’s strong, helpful, respectful and wise. In a brief scene where she puts her aging and ailing husband to bed, there is devastation, beauty and a remembrance of things past. She chides Hester with a verbal slap about her ignorance of real love, noting that it involves cleaning soiled sheets and dignity, not pill popping and theatrics.
“Suicide?” she says. “No one’s worth it.”