Why I love Rachel Weisz’s performance in The Deep… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why I love Rachel Weisz’s per­for­mance in The Deep Blue Sea

25 Nov 2021

A woman with dark hair and a serious expression, wearing a red coat, standing in a doorway.
A woman with dark hair and a serious expression, wearing a red coat, standing in a doorway.
In Ter­ence Davies’ post­war melo­dra­ma, she turns Hes­ter Col­ly­er into one of cinema’s great trag­ic heroines.

Beware of pas­sion, Hes­ter, it always leads to some­thing ugly,” says the moth­er of the man that Hes­ter is cheat­ing on. It’s intend­ed as snide smalltalk, yet this line fore­shad­ows the forces that will toss her daugh­ter-in-law around like a rag doll in a hurricane.

Rachel Weisz sum­mons super­hu­man dig­ni­ty to play a 1950s house­wife humil­i­at­ed by desire in Ter­ence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea. Hes­ter leaves her mar­riage to kind­ly High Court judge, Sir William Col­ly­er (Simon Rus­sell Beale), drawn by the promise of sex­u­al pas­sion with a younger, flaki­er man, Fred­die (Tom Hiddleston).

Fred­die is a for­mer RAF pilot who is seek­ing his next adven­ture after World War Two. The real­i­ty of a rela­tion­ship could nev­er keep his atten­tion. Hes­ter knows this, yet still hurls her­self out of her mar­riage and into freefall. Her jilt­ed, still car­ing hus­band ques­tions her log­ic: But how, in the name of rea­son, could you have gone on lov­ing a man who, by your own con­fes­sion, can give you noth­ing in return?” She responds: Oh, but he can give me some­thing in return, and even does, from time to time.” He asks, What?” She says, Him­self.”

This is the sto­ry of a high-stakes sex­u­al awak­en­ing. Weisz’s voice drops to a low­er pitch when she says the word him­self”, as if access­ing an orgas­mic sense mem­o­ry. She is self-pos­sessed at the same time as she is lost. She owns the choice to be with Fred­die, even though it seems like a kamikaze move to those, like her moth­er-in-law, who favour guard­ed enthu­si­asm over passion.

Two individuals, a man and a woman, standing in a dimly lit interior with wooden panelling and windows.

The Deep Blue Sea began in 1952 as a play by Ter­ence Rat­ti­gan, who cod­ed onto Hes­ter the sto­ry of his secret lover of 10 years. Ken­ny Mor­gan left Rat­ti­gan for a man who mis­treat­ed him until Mor­gan took his own life – an act we see Hes­ter try­ing and fail­ing at the out­set. Rat­ti­gan imprint­ed him­self onto Sir William, a rea­son­able man bewil­dered by the wreck­ing ball of sex that smash­es through his rela­tion­ship bubble.

To com­plete the ping-pong of trans­fer­ence between Hes­ter and gay sto­ry­tellers named Ter­ence, Davies’ adap­ta­tion cleaves to her per­spec­tive, empathis­ing with the expe­ri­ence of an emo­tion­al­ly tor­tured women, as he has done in The House of Mirth and A Qui­et Pas­sion. He decid­ed he want­ed Weisz for his Hes­ter after turn­ing on the TV one sleep­less night and catch­ing her in Bee­ban Kidron’s peri­od romance Swept from the Sea. What land­ed was this won­der­ful lumi­nos­i­ty and won­der­ful eyes”.

This won­der­ful lumi­nos­i­ty ele­vates Hester’s choic­es beyond naivety or self-destruc­tive­ness. Those won­der­ful eyes watch – agog and enrap­tured – as for the first time in her shel­tered life a man that she actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly wants tar­gets her with seduc­tion. Freddie’s dia­logue is cringe­wor­thy but she is ripe for the pluck­ing. We wince over the chasm between his cheap lines and her whole­heart­ed respons­es. She is instant­ly and per­ma­nent­ly avail­able in the deep­est of ways, while he fan­cies her in a capri­cious fash­ion. Tur­moil is ren­dered by the vision of a woman step­ping into her desires, which is pow­er­ful, yet the cat­a­lyst is a man too cal­low to mean­ing­ful­ly care, which is painful, too painful for her to grasp.

This is a melo­dra­ma. Love is the dif­fer­ence between life and death! But it is a dis­tinct­ly Eng­lish melo­dra­ma, with dia­logue expressed in a mode that strains for pro­pri­ety. This is a tragedy,” says a dis­traught Sir William, vis­it­ing Hes­ter after her attempt­ed sui­cide. It’s hard­ly Sopho­cles,” she responds. Weisz’s per­for­mance is attuned to the fact that when the mate­r­i­al is so emo­tion­al­ly big, the per­for­mance can be small. As Fred­die begins the process of leav­ing, she nego­ti­ates for scraps of his time with­out the expect­ed hys­ter­ics. She acts out Hester’s demean­ing behav­iour with a calm resolve.

I think what inter­est­ed me about [Hes­ter] was that she real­ly, kind of com­plete­ly humil­i­at­ed her­self. She has no pride. She doesn’t hold it togeth­er.” Weisz told Com­plex in 2012. Nowa­days, you get over it and your girl­friend takes you out for a drink and says, Come on, move on – there’s plen­ty more fish in the sea.’”

A woman with dark hair and a serious expression, wearing a red coat, standing in a doorway.

The sheer aban­don of Hes­ter, her total lack of mod­er­a­tion or mod­u­la­tion, is what makes her a char­ac­ter for the ages – a Madame Bovary upon Knights­bridge. She is obsessed but not insane. She has found an erot­ic appetite and can­not imag­ine any­one but Fred­die ever sat­ing it. The sto­ry would not work and her char­ac­ter would not stand up if the audi­ence did not see the bliss he once afford­ed, and so it comes ear­ly, a high water­mark that acts as a coun­ter­point to the suf­fer­ing that follows.

There are com­pet­ing ver­sions of The Deep Blue Sea in the cul­ture, most recent­ly a phe­nom­e­nal stage play at the Nation­al The­atre star­ring the late, great Helen McCro­ry as Hes­ter with Tom Burke as Fred­die. Even hin­dered by Hid­dle­ston (a wipe-clean fop with­out Burke’s dirty mag­net­ism) Davies’ film has one endur­ing scene that nails why pas­sion­ate ful­fil­ment can seem worth any sub­se­quent ugli­ness. It arrives dur­ing the open­ing as Hes­ter, clad in a dress­ing gown all alone in a board­ing house, writes Fred­die a sui­cide note. She remem­bers the ear­ly days of their meet­ing. Ada­gio for Strings’ by Samuel Bar­ber plays because this moment needs to be operatic.

Davies most­ly trades in the lan­guage of glances, so the one sex scene has to do a lot. Weisz and Hid­dle­ston are so inter­twined that their limbs seem to belong to each oth­er. Their bod­ies are the same ivory mar­ble, both lean with lines of mus­cu­la­ture. The cam­era spins above them in a rotat­ing bird’s‑eye view, as vio­lins scream in plea­sure and pain. This union rep­re­sents the him­self” that Fred­die some­times gives.

Repres­sion makes you so gasp­ing for sex­u­al love that you’ll accept any deal that comes down the chute. But we wit­ness some­thing that Hes­ter doesn’t. The love, desire and pas­sion she has unlocked belong to her­self, not him­self. Should she live through his loss there will be – and you can take this from Rachel Weisz – plen­ty more fish in the deep blue sea.

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