DEEP END Movie Review

Na Samyn Dnie

There was a comic strip from the early years of Peanuts in which a kid (I don't remember whether it was Charlie Brown or Linus) was asked how his first conversation with the little girl he had a crush on went. “I didn't know what to do,” he replied, “so I hit her.” lt's immediately apparent that that strip was not published in the PC nineties, yet I remember it coming to mind in 1970 when I was watching director Jerzy Skolimowski's subversive and devilishly engrossing Deep End. John Moulder-Brown plays the 15-year-old Michael, whose job in a seedy London public bath surrounds him with all manner of grotesque characters, but more importantly introduces him to his pretty co-worker, Susan (Jane Asher), who instantly becomes the physical embodiment of every romantic and erotic fantasy rattling around in Michael's adolescent head. A German/American co-production with a British cast and a Polish director, Deep End nevertheless has a coherence and a singular comic tone that seems the product of one highly individual vision.You may know where it's going, but you'll be pleasantly on edge until you get there.

NEXT STOP … Knife in the Water, Moonlighting, The Tenant

1970 88m/C GB GE Jane Asher, John Moulder-Brown, Diana Dors, Karl Michael Vogler, Christopher Sandord; D: Jerzy Skolimowski; W: Jerzy Skolimowski, Jerry Gruza, Bloeslav Sulik; C: Charly Steinberger; M: Cat Stevens. VHS NO