Yes, yes, yes, yes!!
Wait, BFI?
…. Region 2..?
..
yes Region 2…
Excellent film.
Odd film. Interesting, if not great.
I saw this film at the AFI theater in D.C. back in the early 1980s and remember being amazed by both the imagery and the unique portrait of unrequited passion. I’ve been wanting to see again every since and I regret missing the recent screening of it here in NYC (Walter Reade theater) with Skolimowski present. I can play region 2 disks but I’d rather this come on Criterion.
This film has haunted me for 40 years! Undoubtedly the best comin-of-age film in the history of the cinema.
i love this movie, I loved both of the main characters( Jane Asher was a great bonus!!)
Is this available in the US? Can’t seem to find it.
This movie was amazing. I saw it as a double feature with Harold and Maude , of all things, missold as “two winter-spring romances to the grooves of Cat Stevens!” Yeeeaaaahhhh, if you like obsession and death-fetish with your winter-spring romances. And Can with your Cat Stevens. But so anyway.
I do believe I did hear something about this getting a Criterion release—really. But my Google Fu seems to be failing me because I cannot drag up any articles or rumors, so I may just be tripping or something. At any rate, it doesn’t matter—any form this movie appears in region 1 is a good thing. Region 2 is acceptable, I’mma get a regionless DVD player upon return home and will totally order this movie. I LOVED it.
It was one of those movies that still totally rocked my world despite my over-educated detached critical viewings of films. A part of it is a real connection/empathy I feel for John Moulder-Brown’s character. It is hard to talk about this because part of the point is that the kid is totally fucked up, but I do relate to his clingy youthful obsessiveness in some of the ways I felt about girls when I was too young to figure out why the hell I was being weird. I grew up and changed—he goes off the deep end. It’s a really great sort of warning story in a way, a movie that I feel with some discussion and guidance should be shown to young teenagers. But not without the discussion and guidance, or else the whole thing may go right over their heads or they could come to the wrong conclusions.
We all know that red means passion, anger, obsession, madness, blood, and all those other vibrant, hot, and negative things. Red is commonly used in movies to portray these things. Nevertheless the use of red for those purposes stand out here, especially strikingly shot against the cool blue and gray swimming pool, which gives a murky, subconscious feeling to the movie. The two tones themselves are enough to cause anxiety.
I saw this movie with my mother and my friend and they were both deeply affected by it. It was difficult for me to explain how much I related to it to them because of course to them that kid’s actions were purely insanity. I am thinking, though I am not sure, that this movie makes a lot more sense to males than females. Obsession and anxiety in male youth is underexplored in favor of detachment and introversion, mostly because males in most cultures are required to hide their feelings. If they let their feelings out more, this movie would be a lot more recognizable. It is an interior surface movie, one of the few films that explores something that no other movie has sufficiently had the daring and maybe even poor taste to just split open and show naked and disemboweled to the audience. And of course, as a result, it’s very hard to watch and incredibly difficult to find. I was very, very lucky to get a chance to see a print of this movie, I really hope it becomes more widely available soon.
—PolarisDiB
Jaspar Lamar Crabb
DEEP END is getting released on DVD by BFI in July!!!
An exceptional, unlikely coming-of-age film from Jerzy Skolimowski. John Moulder-Brown gets a job at a public bath house and is soon smitten with co-worker Jane Asher. Asher, who’s seeing two other men, could care less. It’s by no means straightforward. Instead DEEP END is gritty, funny, and ultimately tragic. That should be no surprise coming from the idiosyncratic Skolimowski. His films are always a mix of genres. Moulder-Brown is terrific as a the awkward adolescent and Asher has what is probably her best (certainly most substantial) film role. They have great chemistry together. There’s also an oddball supporting cast including Erica Beer as the bath’s bitchy cashier and one-time sexpot Diana Dors as one of Moulder-Brown’s kinkier clients. Karl Michael Vogler gives a fine performance as one of Asher’s callous lovers. The music is by Cat Stevens though its sparsely used.
Thoughts on this great movie????