THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN (M). (Columbia/Manadaly/Village Roadshow) Director: Ulu Grosbard Stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Jackson, Ryan Merriman, John Kapelos, Cory Buck, Alexa Vega, Michael McGrady, Tony Musante Running time: 108 minutes.
Writer Stephen Schiff (Lolita, the recent True Crime, etc) has done a good job of adapting Jacquelyn Mitchard's best-selling novel for the screen, and he turns the film into a compelling study of the psychological damage a family can inflict upon itself under times of great emotional stress.
The film opens in 1988, when photographer Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) heads off to a school reunion in Chicago with her three young children in tow. In the hotel lobby though her son Ben mysteriously disappears. Despite an intense police search and investigation, the boy is never found.
Nine years later, the family has got on with their lives, although the tensions, guilt and doubts are still simmering away just beneath the surface. The Cappadoras have permanently moved to Chicago, where Pat (Treat Williams, from The Prince Of The City, etc) has opened a restaurant with his father and Beth has re-established her career as a photographer. Then one day a boy knocks on their door, offering to cut their lawn. Beth immediately recognises him as Ben.
At first, The Deep End Of the Ocean's premise reads a little like that of Olivier, Olivier, the 1993 French film in which a teenage hustler tries to convince a family that he is their missing son. However, in this solid and touching drama, the twist is the boy is really the Cappadora's missing son. Ben, or Sam as he is now known, has been raised by his adoptive father George (John Kapelos), who was unaware of his origins.
Sam's return brings with it a whole new set of complications, and the emotional ripples further threaten the family. Sam's presence also begins the healing process between Beth and her strangely disturbed teenage son Vincent (Jonathan Jackson, a star of tv soap General Hospital), who is consumed by his own guilty secrets.
Another intriguing aspect of the film is the way in which the characters have changed during the decade. The only member of the family who seems unaffected by these events is daughter Kerry (Alexa Vega), who is given little screen time anyway.
Pfeiffer delivers an unusually strong and emotionally demanding performance as Beth, who grows stronger and more confident and controlled. Jackson is excellent as Vincent, while Williams is also surprisingly good as he portrays Pat's slow disintegration. Whoopi Goldberg brings unusual restraint to her smaller role as a sympathetic detective who befriends the Cappadora family.
Hailing from a theatrical background, Ulu Grosbard is a director known for his solid character driven films (Straight Time, Georgia, etc), and he brings a deep emotional resonance to this study of a family in crisis. He explores this emotionally complex and rich material without becoming too manipulative, and keeps the mood deliberately restrained and understated. While Grosbard effectively pushes a number of buttons, The Deep End Of The Ocean is never quite the tear jerker that it could have been.
*** greg king http://www.netau.com.au/gregking
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews