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The Deep Blue Sea [Blu-ray]

1 disc
Region 1 USA/CA (info)

One of Terence Rattigan's most celebrated plays is given a new screen adaptation in this drama written and directed by Terence Davies. Hester Page (Rachel Weisz) is rescued in the midst of a suicide attempt by her landlady Mrs. Elton (Ann Mitchell) when she smells gas. As those around her ponder why a beautiful woman would choose such a fate, we learn that Hester is not really Hester at all -- she's actually Lady Collyer, the wife of well-known and respected judge Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale). However, Lady Collyer has never known love or satisfaction in her marriage, and she fell into an affair with Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), a former RAF pilot. Lady Collyer has become hopelessly infatuated with Freddie, leaving her husband and living with Freddie under an assumed identity. But the woman who now calls herself Hester soon discovers she loves Freddie far more than he loves her, and between his drinking and neglect for her, it seems she's given up her old life for one that has no future. This marks the second time THE DEEP BLUE SEA has been brought to the screen; Vivien Leigh starred in the 1955 version directed by Anatole Litvak.
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Credits

Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon, Russell Beale, Ann Mitchell
Critic Reviews

4 stars out of 5 -- "Echoes of BRIEF ENCOUNTER abound, and Davies deliberately courts them...it often plumbs similar depths."
Total Film
"The three leads are superb....Rachel Weisz's lustrous evocation of sensual sorrow gives Hester a distinct cerebral edge."
Sight and Sound
"Exceptionally well-made and completely fearless in its depiction of the widest range of romantic emotions, this is a film as fiercely committed to passion as its heroine, and that's saying a lot."
Los Angeles Times
"This compact rendering -- at once feverish and meticulous in its calibration of wanton emotions -- proves just how deep Mr. Daviess knowledge goes."
USA Today
"Rachel Weisz, as a woman who risks everything for the love of the wrong man, carries the mood and subtext of the material safely tucked in her dressing-gown pocket -- shes vulnerable and self-motivated in all the right measures."
Movieline
"Davies has been able to shape the stage play to his strengths....It helps that Weisz, in one of her finest performances, opens herself beautifully to vulnerability and folly." -- Grade: A
Entertainment Weekly