Maternal instincts

>> Tilda Swinton is superb in The Deep End

by MATTHEW HAYS

Tilda Swinton delivers a fine characterization in The Deep End, summing up every nuance in a wildly controlled, virtuoso performance as a woman desperately trying to contain her emotionally charged secrets. And luckily for us, Swinton is backed up here by a solid supporting cast and a surprising script.

In The Deep End, Swinton is a domesticated woman who seems to have what most middle-class types would be happy to attain: three children, a father-in-law and a husband who, because of his job, is away from home most of the time. The strains of having hubby away can be felt, but Swinton seems to handle the pressures of virtual single parentdom with confidence. That is, until her adolescent son begins to hang out with a bad sort.

Not that she has anything against his being gay--though he's still in the early phases of coming out--but the man her son is hanging out with is a nasty fellow (played with bravura sleaze by Jonathan Tucker), and after the two men crash in an alcohol-related car accident, she goes to the nightclub where Tucker works to ask this offending boyfriend to back away from her son.

Turns out, her instincts were about right. Soon enough, Tucker shows up late one night to torment the anguished adolescent about their relationship. A fight ensues and somehow, the drunken Tucker ends up dead. Swinton discovers him the next day, and it's up to her to try and hide the body to protect her son.

The Deep End is one of those deceptively simple films; it tells a straightforward story, but the layers of emotional trauma Swinton suffers gives the film considerable dimension--not to mention the endless secrets she's trying to keep by the film's climax. The Deep End feels a bit like a melodrama and film noir collapsed into one movie.

And Swinton's secrets should remain just that in a review like this; to reveal them, I suspect, would ruin much of its impact. The screenwriting and directing team of David Siegel and Scott McGehee have created one of those films that jaded, we've-seen-everything-already filmgoers rejoice over. Don't let anyone ruin it for you, just go and see it for yourself.

The Deep End opens Friday, Sept. 21